


Thaumatrope

by ancient_moonshine



Category: Pacific Rim (Movies), 琅琊榜 | Nirvana in Fire (TV)
Genre: Angst, Disabled Character, Epilepsy, Jaeger pilot! Jingyan, Jaeger pilot!Lin Shu, Of a sorts, Pacific Rim AU, Possession, Precursor!MCS, So much angst
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-06-01
Updated: 2018-06-01
Packaged: 2019-05-15 16:53:34
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 33,798
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14794349
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ancient_moonshine/pseuds/ancient_moonshine
Summary: Lin Shu fights to regain what he had. Jingyan's just trying to save the world and his husband. Mei Chang Su watches and plots, but humanity is both more fallible and dangerous than it seems to be.They all pay the price.[The Pacific Rim AU that no one ever asked for and ended up eating my life.]





	Thaumatrope

 

It’s a mountain, this time. Rather, a manor that was built into one, so cunningly constructed that a visitor arriving on foot wouldn’t notice it even if he’d circled around the base twice. Jingyan blinks, slightly disoriented. He’s seated at a balcony overlooking the mountainside. It’s winter. The branches of the trees around him are bare – all except for the plum blossoms, blooming thickly amidst the pristine white. Jingyan’s breath steams in the air, and he shivers. Grateful for his thick, fur-lined silk robes, the heavy cloak.

In front of him, there a low table with two celadon cups. Beside it is a brazier with two pots. One celadon, the other clay. Across him, on the other side of the table sits Xiao Shu. As Jingyan watches, he pours steaming water into one cup, sets it in front of him. Pours out tea for himself.

Around them the snow falls. The roof of the manor shields them from the worst of it, the heat of the brazier keeping them warm. The branches of the plum blossoms rustle, flowers drifting down as thickly as the snow. There’s a craving in Jingyan to sink into the peace of this place, but not quite. Like he’s forgotten something urgent, and it’s itching frantically at the back of his mind as he tries to make himself remember. He frowns, tries to remember where he is.

“You haven’t drunk your water.” Xiao Shu says. Jingyan stares at his cup. Steam curls up from its lip. Jingyan lifts it in his hand. The porcelain is very hot. He lifts the cup to his lips, then stops. Sets it down again. Xiao Shu’s sipping at his tea, expression serene. Serene. Not something he thought he would ever call Xiao Shu. Jingyan frowns.

Xiao Shu is dressed in an unfamiliar layered blue robe that Jingyan doesn’t remember him wearing before, a fox-fur trimmed cloak around his shoulders. And it’s strange, because Xiao Shu never got cold in the Drift, rarely did even out of it except-

Except when-

“Jingyan,” Xiao Shu’s voice is soft. “Please don’t fight it.” Jingyan stares. A flake of snow settles on Xiao Shu’s cheek, and he blinks. But when Jingyan reaches forward to brush it away, he realizes it isn’t snow at all. It’s ash.

Xiao Shu doesn’t blink. His skin is cold, very cold. So are his eyes. His expression is calm. Reflexively, Jingyan’s fingers curl into a fist. But he’s not in a Jaeger and he’s not facing a Kaiju. He’s facing someone – something infinitely more dangerous.

“Langya University,” Xiao Shu  - not Xiao Shu – answers Jingyan without him needing to speak. . “Your mother was an instructor here for a while. She brought you to visit when you were a toddler, but you’re too young to remember. That was before she took up her doctorate in biomechanics.” He holds his right hand over the brazier. “She returned over twenty years later. By that time you were already in the military, but you still managed to visit her whenever you were on shore leave.”

“Your husband came here almost by coincidence.” He says, ignoring how Jingyan’s trembling hand is splayed on the table, nails practically digging into the wood. “He needed help with his dissertation, and his father pointed him in the direction of a family friend he hadn’t seen in years. He stayed here for a month. Long enough to perfect the Pons system with your mother.” He lowers his cup. “All this information I obtained from your Lin Shu. Your mind remains safe.”

“Safe.” Jingyan’s lips curl in derision. “In a place that Xiao Shu and I both knew about, so I would assume I was in headspace and drop my guard.” He says coldly. “So you’ve learned to manipulate my husband’s memories, too? Is there no part of him you’ll leave unviolated?” Not-Xiao Shu – _the Emissary, the monster, one of the fucking bastards responsible for all this " I am Mei Chang Su," spoken softly with a chilling smile that was nothing like Xiao Shu's. His eyes -_ simply watches him, his expression cool and serene.

“So says the human mining my consciousness for information on how to win your hopeless war.” His eyes flash phosphor blue. “What should worry you more is the information you’ll unintentionally give up the longer you continue. Your husband was the one who made that mistake first, after all.”

The hiss of the falling snow turns into a dull roar, then a piercing wail. Jingyan opens his eyes. Dizzy and disoriented, exhausted from how much effort it had taken to keep his mind from tearing apart.

Around them, the siren shrieks. Another kaiju is emerging from the Breach.

“That’s the second time he’s been forced out.” A man’s voice, harsh.  Jingyan blinks, disoriented. Gentle hands remove his Pons headset, but the alarm is still wailing.

 “It’s all right, Jingyan. Marshall Lin is already handling matters,” A piece of tissue is pushed into his hand - Dr. Jing, and Jingyan winces when he lifts the tissue to his nose – with more effort than it should- and it comes away soaked in red.

In front of him, Xiao Shu’s pale figure is strapped onto a hospital bed. His eyes are shut, an IV line carrying sedatives stabbed into his wrist. Another scientist – Xia Jiang from K-science - is bent over him. Dr. Xia removes Xiao Shu’s Pons headset, pushing open his eyelids and shining a light into them, checking for bleeding before shaking his head.

“Were you able to get anything at all?” Dr. Xia asks. Jingyan shakes his head.

“No.” He says, his voice hoarse. “But I will.” 

\--

It’s a while before Lin Shu realizes he’s on the floor. A little longer before he notices the little boy staring at him, blinking owlishly. He winces, blinks. Wearily re-assessing his surroundings, checking himself for injuries after the little kid  - _Fei Liu_ , Lin Shu reminds himself - helps him sit up.

(They’re alone. Lin Shu’s grateful for it. Grateful that no one from his old life was around to see. His father had stayed for an hour earlier, but his duties as the PPDC’s Marshall had caused him to be called away.

 Lin Shu’s glad. He doesn’t need to see him like this. No one needs to see him like this. )

Fei Liu’s small for his age, but surprisingly strong. Lin Shu tries to muster a grin. It feels too stretched tight, wrong, and Fei Liu doesn’t smile back.

“Seizure,” Fei Liu says. Lin Shu winces again.

“Yeah, I know. I fell again, didn’t I?” The boy nods. He’d been from an orphanage close to the area ravaged by the latest Kaiju to surface from the Breach. God knew how it ended up chasing him into an alleyway. Fei Liu had been the last face Lin Shu remembered seeing before the weight of piloting the Jaeger alone had caused him to black out in his harness.  

Fei Liu looks like he’s about to say something more, but then there’s the sound of footsteps, and Lin Shu sighs when his husband walks into his sickroom with a plastic bag full of take-out,  alarm on his features as he sees Lin Shu half-sitting on the floor, still too weak to stand.

“Xiao Shu? I told you not to stand up!” Lin Shu scowls at  Jingyan as the latter picks him up – easier now that he’s lost so much weight – starts carrying him to the hospital bed.

“So I should just piss the mattress?” He snaps, then regrets it when Jingyan flinches.

Silence. Jingyan breaks it first.

“Do you need to go to the bathroom?” He asks, avoiding Lin Shu’s eyes. Guilt curdles like the taste of spoiled milk on Lin Shu’s tongue as Jingyan gently sets him down on the bed.

“No,” He says, his voice soft. “I was able to go before I had the seizure.” It was the fifth today, and it was only eleven in the morning.

Jingyan is silent as he pulls the blanket over Lin Shu’s legs. Fei Liu is quiet, but at Lin Shu’s encouraging smile he lights up, begins rooting through the bag of take-out. Jingyan places a pillow behind Lin Shu’s back, and in spite of himself Lin Shu relaxes against it, closing his eyes and willing for the world to stop spinning.

Jingyan’s stroking his forehead. Lin Shu sags against him.

“You smell so good,” he mumbles. Jingyan rests his chin against the top of his head.

“I haven’t even taken a shower yet,” Jingyan mumbles. His chin is covered in stubble. Lin Shu makes a face when Jingyan playfully nuzzles his neck, but his eyes burn with unshed tears when he sees how reddened with exhaustion Jingyan’s eyes are, how pale he is. How the results from the MRI scans haven’t come back yet but Lin Shu knows there won’t be anything good about them.

“We will get through this,” Jingyan says softly. Lin Shu swallows back his retort – and the sobs that threaten.

“Yeah,” he whispers. “We will.”

\---

They had been childhood friends. Best friends. Growing up, Jingyan couldn’t remember a time when he wasn’t running after Xiao Shu, or vice-versa. He’d immigrated when he was eleven, but they’d still kept touch as best as they could. Inevitably, they drifted apart. And then one morning a monster suddenly emerged from the depths of the Pacific, and Jingyan and his mother had been sent to meet with possibly the only person who could save humanity.

Now he’s sitting in Marshall Lin’s office in the Hong Kong shatterdome, recounting his latest trip into his husband’s mind. The dozens of times he’s done this hasn’t made it any easier

 “The Precursor is trapped.” Jingyan says. “Not lying in wait like we initially suspected. It’s a struggle for him to keep me out, every session.” He shoves away the thought of how _wrong_ it feels to violate his husband’s mind like this, forces himself to speak. “Either way, he’s keeping Xiao Shu’s consciousness suppressed. It’s still his mind, still our shared headspace, but. It’s all wrong.” Like Jingyan had returned home to find someone had replaced every single board and beam of the place. A subtle offness that Jingyan couldn’t shake off even as the Precursor did its best time and again to lull him into a false sense of security.

Marshall Lin’s expression doesn’t change. . Jingyan’s father-in-law has aged ten years in the span of two, ever since his son was incarcerated after the thing possessing him had almost destroyed humanity’s last chances of survival - taking twenty Jaegers and a whole city down with it.

“Were you able to gather any information that we might use against it?” Jingyan closes his eyes, sifting through the storm of thoughts and memories that his human senses couldn’t often comprehend.

“They’ve been around for a long time,” Jingyan says at last. “Since before the dinosaurs. They _were_ the ones who wiped out the dinosaurs, apparently. They just couldn’t colonize because atmospheric conditions weren’t right at the time.” Marshall Lin isn’t looking at his face, but at his right hand. The stiff sleeve of his uniform clenched tight between thumb and forefinger.

He lets go like the piece of cloth has burned him. Marshall Lin drags his gaze up, and shame fills Jingyan. Shame, pain, and guilt.

_You should have noticed. Why didn’t you notice?_

“They’ve – They’d been watching this planet.” Jingyan says, his voice hoarse. Conditions still aren’t ideal, but more survivable than before.” He hesitates. “This is just conjecture, but I got the sense that they’re rushing. I think their current world is about to give out, so they have to set up residence somewhere else as quickly as they can.”

Marshall Lin’s sigh is a heavy, dragging gust. “That still doesn’t tell us anything, except that they’re getting desperate. And a desperate species will stop at nothing to survive.”

“… I’m sorry, Sir.” Jingyan says quietly. Marshall Lin shakes his head.

“Do not blame yourself, Jingyan. The Precursors wouldn’t have lasted this long and taken so many worlds if they hadn’t been a bunch of cunning sons-of-bitches. Anyway, you were able to parse their motivations for sending the Kaiju in. That’s going to help when we’re strategizing what to do next.” He pauses a little. Like he’s bracing himself for the next question, and Jingyan knows what it’s going to be, so he steels himself too.

“How is Xiao Shu?” Marshall Lin fights to keep his voice neutral, but Jingyan hears the subtle crack in it.

 _I am bringing him back._ He reminds himself. He takes a deep breath. 

“He didn’t have a seizure, Sir.” Jingyan says, willing his voice not to break. “The new drugs my mother’s having Dr. Xia use are working. I… couldn’t feel him. The Emissary’s keeping him locked away too deeply for me to sense him. But. He wasn’t in any pain. At least, none that I could feel.”

 Marshall Lin is quiet. For a moment he looks like he’s about to tell him something, but then changes his mind.

“Thank you, Lt. Xiao. You may go.” Jingyan stands up, salutes. He shuts the door to Marshall Lin’s office behind him. It’s only when he’s in the safety of his bunker that he allows himself to shake, to fall apart.

They get married in the Shatterdome’s chapel. By the time the ceremony started, the place was so packed that the only free space left was the aisle leading to the altar. Jingyan had expected they would have a quiet, understated ceremony. Lin Shu had grinned at him and told him how that would be next to impossible.

“People are desperate for something to celebrate,” He’d heroically held back from snickering at Jingyan’s light chagrin. “What better ‘fuck you’ to the Apocalypse is there than a wedding?” Needless to say, he was right. Among the crowds Lin Shu sees cameras flashing, recognizes several journalists with more nerve than common sense, notorious for getting as close as possible to Jaeger fights heedless of the flying debris. But the spirit, the sheer joy of the atmosphere more than made up for the pure chaos. And when Lin SHu and Jingyan arrive, both entering by the main door – a wave of raucous cheers breaks out, washes over them both. 

Jingyan smiles at him, squeezes his hand. Lin Shu grins back. Their parents are waiting by the altar, smiling, Auntie Jing with tears in her eyes, the same as Dad. When the music starts to play, a cacophony of instruments squealing before melding into a sweet, mellow tune, they begin to walk down the aisle together.

It was the only way for them to get married. They already lived in each other’s heads, everything done in tandem, understanding so pure that sometimes it surpassed words. They walk, step matching step, hands laced together. And then they reach the altar, but instead of kneeling like they’d been hurriedly rehearsed to do, Jingyan faces Lin Shu.

He’s still smiling. Lin Shu himself hasn’t stopped since they’d walked in, and his cheeks are practically aching. The priest is speaking, looking more confused than anything else, but Lin Shu finds himself tuning him out anyway. Because here, between him and Jingyan, no vows were needed to be spoken out loud.

Jingyan’s hands are warm on either side of his face. His sweet, impish expression tells Lin Shu all he needs to know, and he doesn’t stop his delighted, giddy laughter as he flings his arms around Jingyan at the same time Jingyan leans in, thoroughly debauching him in front of the whole world.

\--

The worst thing Jingyan can’t forgive himself for is that he left. Had he not taken that reassignment, maybe things would have gone differently. Maybe they could have just lost one Jaeger instead of twenty. Maybe the Jaeger program wouldn’t have been touted as a catastrophic failure, the last thing it was. Maybe they wouldn’t have lost Xiao Shu.

Be that as it may, Jingyan is first and foremost a soldier, and a soldier had to know how to keep moving despite loss. The surviving Jaegers – most of them older models rebuilt from scratch, others like Foya and Winter Colossus cobbled together from salvageable parts - regroup and under Marshall Lin’s leadership the Hong Kong Shatterdome is rebuilt. However, the damage had been done. Six months after the Chiyan Incident. Marshall Lin had returned from the mainland with the news that the PPDC’s funding had been drastically reduced in favour of building the Wall of Life along the Pacific coastline.

Jingyan finds out during a general assembly Marshall Lin conducts. Needless to say, the news does not go over well.

“They’ve got to be kidding us!”  Mu Qing roars.  “What’re they planning to do, seal themselves away  and leave everyone else to die? Have they even seen a Kaiju attack up close? Those fuckers will tear through that wall in seconds!” 

Nihuang is seething silently beside him, her arms crossed. She looks completely unsurprised. Truth be told, so was Jingyan.

“You underestimate how short-sighted politicians can be,” Lin Chen drawls. His face is pale with exhaustion and lacking its usual mischievous cheer. Jingyan wonders if he’s been sleeping. “So long as they can bury their heads in sand, they’re happy enough to ignore their impending doom.”  Mu Qing looks like he’s about to go on a rant again, but the cold voice that floats up from behind them stops him. Jingyan stiffens instinctively when he hears it.

“It’s not so much short-sightedness as their - frankly justifiable - loss of faith in the Jaeger program.”  Xia Jiang, head of K-Science, had skin that was ravaged blue from the Kaiju’s toxins. Jingyan remembers that Dr. Xia had worked with his mother in the Jaeger Tech department at one point, but had had a colossal falling-out due to Dr. Xia’s less than ethical methods. Dr. Xia had been taken off her team but the PPDC couldn’t afford to lose him as an asset, so he’d remained as the head of the Kaiju research department.

“We all know it was Lieutenant Lin Shu’s carelessness that cost the PPDC its worst losses.” Jingyan bristles, but a firm hand settles on his shoulder. Nihuang. Her mouth is a hard, angry line as she shakes her head in warning. Beside her, Zhanying also looks concerned. Guilt twists in Jingyan’s belly when he sees his right arm, ending in a bandaged stump.   

“What do we propose we should do, then?” Marshall Lin’s voice remains remarkably even. Instead of answering, Dr. Xia looks around him. His gaze falls on Jingyan, hard and unblinking.

“I have a proposal, but it requires the cooperation of K-Science and Jaegertech, along with a very trusted pilot. Just the one will do.”

The MRI results come, and Lin Shu doesn’t receive news he wasn’t expecting. Afterwards Jingyan holds onto him from behind. If Lin Shu closes his eyes he can almost pretend that they’re back in their bunker, and not in the infirmary.

“It’s not the end,” Jingyan whispers in the dark. “Dr. Yan said there are options. We just need a good treatment plan, then-“

“The brain damage is permanent, Jingyan.” Lin Shu says, flat and hopeless. “I’m grounded for life.” He carefully skitters away thoughts of how Dr. Yan would have broken the news to Dad by now.

 _An invalid_ , he thinks but does not say. The day has barely ended, and he has counted ten seizures. It will get better with time, Dr. Yan had assured them. But unspoken went the bald truth:  Lin Shu will never pilot a Jaeger again, he’ll never be able to share his mind with Jingyan, and the PPDC is down yet another Jaeger , and Dad–

Jingyan-

A shaky exhale. “I’m sorry,” Jingyan whispers. And Lin Shu. The one thing Lin Shu cannot take right now is to have Jingyan fall apart on him too. Lin Shu’s mind is already doing enough of that for both of them. 

“Hey,” he whispers. He turns towards Jingyan, cradles his face between his palms. “It’s not your fault.” Because it isn’t, it really isn’t, but good luck getting Jingyan to believe that. 

“I’ll find a way.” Lin Shu says against Jingyan’s lips. “We’ll find a way.” Because Lin Shu is not going to be branded a cripple. God help him, his body might fail him but no way in hell is he going to let that stop him from winning this war.

 “I’ll be with you.” Jingyan promises. “I’ll be with you every step of the way.”

Jingyan’s mind is still spinning when the day’s session ends. He’d gone under twice more, bu’he'd failed to detect even Mei Chang Su’s presence, and for what felt like hours he’d slogged through a barren, snow-covered landscape, calling out with no one able to hear him.

He had resurfaced with his head aching, empty-handed. Marshall Lin had relieved him of his duties for that day, and the day after, had given strict orders for Jingyan to rest. Jingyan had saluted him knowing full well the next day would find him at the Emissary’s holding cell again, holding onto Xiao Shu’s motionless hand.

He’s in the mess hall for dinner when he runs into a couple of familiar faces.

“Jingyan! Jingyan! Over here!” Jingyan turns to find Meng Zhi, waving his hand and grinning at him.

“Meng -dage?  When did you get here?” He manages to set his tray down on the table beside him just before the older man crushes him in a bear hug.

“Good to see you, Jingyan.” He pulls back still grinning. There’s more gray in his hair and more lines in his deeply tanned face than from when Jingyan saw him last, but it’s still the same wide smile and the same warmth. “Got here just this morning. The others are flying in later.”

“Others?” Jingyan echoes. A frown flickers on Meng Zhi’s face.

“Marshall Lin didn’t tell you? Xia Dong’s got a new partner. New recruit from Xiamen, name’s Gong Yu. Used to be a member of the Hua group, rumors say. They’ll probably arrive tonight.”

Xia Dong used to pilot Winter Colossus with her husband. If Meng Zhi was here, that meant he and his partner-  that meant Marshall Lin was summoning all the remaining Jaeger pilots to the Hong Kong Shatterdome.

 _For what?_ Jingyan hadn’t been told. But then again, out of sheer necessity he had to be locked out of the loop. _We’re not taking the risk Lt. Lin did._ Jingyan resolutely ignores the quiet twinge of anxious resentment he feels.

“There’s a lot of confidential information that isn’t coursed through our department.” He says, carefully neutral. Meng Zhi’s eyes dim.

“You’re still working under Xia Jiang?” Silence. And then the sound of a tray being slammed down has Jingyan glancing up to find a tall teenager with his hair in a ponytail scowling at him.

“Fei Liu?” Jingyan had been expecting him, but he still isn’t able to mask his surprise. “You’ve gotten so tall.” But Fei Liu just glares at him, shovelling mashed potatoes and fried chicken into his mouth as fast as possible. Meng Zhi sighs, slides his tray next to jingyan’s.

“Oi, Fei Liu. You haven’t seen your Yan-gege in over a year, is that any way to greet him?” Fei Liu ignores him.

There’s a small pillow right beside Fei Liu, pristine and white. Meng Zhi’s eyes follow Jingyan staring at it, opens his mouth.  Fei Liu catches him staring, slams his fork and spoon down as loudly as possible onto his plate, glaring at Jingyan one last time before picking up his half-empty tray – and the pillow - and marching off.

“He still hasn’t forgiven me,” Jingyan says. Meng Zhi sighs again.

“Don’t say that-“ He falls silent at the look Jingyan levels him.

The last time Fei Liu had spoken to Jingyan, the then-thirteen year old had been screaming at him for letting the bad men take his Su-gege away. Jingyan hadn’t stopped the child from hitting him, but Fei Liu’s punches kept getting weaker and weaker until the little boy collapsed crying into his arms.  

“… No, he hasn’t.” Now it’s Meng Zhi’s turn to glare at the curious onlookers who’d witnessed that little scene. They quickly duck their heads. Jingyan shakes his head, picks up his tray.

“Don’t keep me from your lunch, Meng Da-ge. If Marshall Lin wants us to work on something, he’d have told me by now. Otherwise, it’s best if I don’t know. The risk might be greater than we can afford.”

 ---

Lin Shu does not take the reality of his injury well.

He’s released from hospital confinement three weeks after that disastrous mission, back into the apartment they shared before they moved into the Shatterdome’s bunker. Dr. Yan recommends him a specialist, who  prescribes him anti-epileptic drugs. He also advises Lin Shu to get plenty of bed rest, and gives Jingyan instructions regarding his care.

The drugs don’t work. The seizures don’t subside. One minute he’ll be starting to feel woozy, the next he’s lying disoriented and exhausted with his mouth sore from how he’d bitten through his tongue, or his cheek. Once, twice, thrice, over ten times, and Lin Shu begins to count time as how many minutes until his next seizure. 

Dad tries to visit when he can. Lin Shu learns to dread them as much as the next seizure. He also learnsto dread Jingyan’s inevitable fussing. Jingyan is never anything but the gentlest, the most caring of husbands.  On the rare times Lin Shu tries to get up Jingyan is always there to catch him when he collapses. He keeps Lin SHu breathing through his seizures, turning him to the side and keeping his airways clear, holding Lin Shu’s hand all the while. Since there’s no discernible pattern to Lin Shu’s triggers, he makes sure not to leave him alone. But Lin Shu doesn’t miss how Jingyan’s hands tremble in exhaustion. The dark circles under his eyes. How much weight Jingyan loses in between caring for Lin Shu and his own guilt.

“It’s not your fault” Lin Shu says one night when he’s feeling comparably better. Jingyan holds a cup of juice to his lips, and Lin Shu chokes down the wave of disgust he feels at how he can’t even fix himself a drink. He’d tried and nearly scalded himself with near-boiling water from the electric kettle when he fell against the countertop.

He takes a sip of juice. Jingyan reaches over to wipe his mouth with a piece of tissue , stops at Lin Shu’s irritated glare. Lin Shu plucks the tissue from his hand, wipes his own mouth.

“I let the Kaiju tear me out of my harness,” Jingyan finally says. He’s looking down at the cup of tea, clenching the porcelain so hard that Lin Shu’s worried he might crack it. “If I’d been more careful, you wouldn’t have had to pilot Foya alone.” Lin Shu’s breath goes short at the memory of tearing metal and a craggy face roaring in fury as Lin Shu grappled with its limbs, gritting his teeth and desperately keeping the Kaiju from ripping the Jaeger apart.  

Lin Shu gingerly shakes his head, cups Jingyan’s cheek in his palm. “That fucking bastard nearly _ripped_ you out of the cockpit. Do you have _any_ idea how terrifying it was to witness that?” He gives Jingyan a little shake for good measure. “I’d take this over losing you, anytime.” Jingyan doesn’t answer with words, just tugs Lin Shu close and kisses him. Lin Shu kisses back, holds on just as tightly. It’s true. He would rather suffer this injury than lose Jingyan. But with this injury, Lin Shu had lost his whole world.

After the sixth seizure during the seventh day, Lin Shu manages to stumble to the bathroom when Jingyan has to momentarily duck out and pay the delivery man for their take-out. He doesn’t realize he’d been staring at himself in the mirror for a good five minutes until Jingyan returns, his knock startling Lin Shu out of his blank shock. It had been less than two months, and he can’t even recognize the shrunken ghost watching him with hollow eyes.

Jingyan wraps him in a hug as soon as he manages to will himself to step out of the bathroom. Lin Shu clings to him tightly for a moment, then gently pushes him aside. Sitting on the edge of the bed, and he’s silent for a long while. Jingyan rubbing at the spot between his (now-prominent})shoulderblades, and Lin Shu is eternally thankful he’s here, but just right now he wishes he were alone.

“I’m not dead yet, Jingyan.” He finally says. He glances up at Jingyan, and his voice goes hard and cold. “Like hell am I gonna let those bastards win this fight.”

That night, when Jingyan’s dozed off into a light sleep beside him, Lin Shu reaches for his phone. Going through his contacts list shouldn’t be this nerve-wracking, but Lin Shu pathetically sags in relief when he finds the name he’s looking for without his brain short-circuiting on him.  He presses the call button. It takes no time at all for the person at the other end to pick up.

“Xiao Shu,” Lin Chen doesn’t sound remotely surprised to hear from him. In fact, Lin Shu can picture his grin as clearly as if the L’OCCENT officer were standing in front of him. “This place is so boring without you, but I bet you’re going through worse just holed up in your love nest. Are you ready for a project? Jaegertech’s’s been badgering me about it, but I’m not really sure I find it interesting enough.” All lies, but there. Lin Chen’s given him a way out, and Lin Shu is so impossibly grateful.

 “Tell me about it first.” Lin Shu replies. For the first time in a month, he grins. “I want to know what I’m getting into before I do your homework for you.”

 ---

The last time Jingyan had spoken, truly spoken to Xiao Shu (and not a stranger wearing his face), they had been fighting. By the end of it Jingyan had been shaking, in the bunker he used to share with Xiao Shu, his fists bloodied from how hard he’d been pounding the concrete wall. Xiao Shu hadn’t come to see him. Not that night, not when he left for Anchorage the next day.

 “I don’t understand why you’re blaming yourself. He wanted you gone.” The Emissary is awake, for once. The tan from Xiao Shu’s skin has faded after almost two years stuck indoors. He’s lost so much weight that his cheekbones are practically sticking out from his skin. Instead of sparkling with a lively mischief, his eyes are solemn and calm. Jingyan finds himself going back to them again and again, searching for a trace of Xiao Shu anywhere and finding nothing.

“You think I don’t know the man I married?” Jingyan says flatly. “I knew what he was trying to do.” By that point Xiao Shu had been trying to drive him away for the better part of the year. It makes Jingyan seethe that this monster probably already knows everything about it.

The Emissary tilts his head. “Yet you still left,” He says. Jingyan barely contains his flinch. “And you’re angry at yourself for it for letting him win.” Jingyan takes a deep breath.

“Xiao Shu always wins his battles,” he says. He tries to change the subject. “He wouldn’t let himself lose when his own body turned against him. It’s only a matter of time before he finds a way to beat _you.“_

He hates the way the Emissary looks at him, looks at everyone on Dr. Xia’s team. Quiet arrogance, mingled with faint amusement.

“You hope so much that your husband is still here. That one day he’ll wake up.” He folds his hands on the table in front of him, an elegant, contained movement so unlike Xiao Shu. “Meanwhile, I’ve seen all there is to know in his head. I know him possibly more intimately than you.” There’s a plastic cup of water there. Not there for the sake of mercy, but Dr. Xia had ordered Jingyan to keep the Emissary talking as much as possible. The Emissary reaches for it, takes a sip.

“He won’t thank you for bringing him back.” The Emissary says. “In fact, he’ll hate you for it. But far less than how much he’ll hate himself, for everything he allowed to happen.”

“Over seventy-thousand people are dead because of him. Seventy-thousand civilians and soldiers alike. Thirty-seven Jaeger pilots and their crew members. Some of their pilots were your friends. Family.” Jingyan wants to vomit at how calmly the Emissary says this all. Barely notices himself half-rising from his seat, his fists clenched.

“He let me in.” The Emissary continues speaking, and the light hits his eyes. For a moment Jingyan almost thinks they glow phosphorescent blue the way they do in the Drift.

“Do you really want him to live with that?” Only now does Jingyan spot how tightly the Emissary his gripping the edge of his sleeve. He looks up, and spots the telltale tic working in Xiao Shu’s cheek, that told Jingyan a seizure was coming.

He catches Xiao Shu before he falls off his chair, cradling his head and keeping it tilted to the side, keeping him breathing. Paramedics rush into the cell, followed by Xia Jiang, watching everything with an unreadable expression. The seizure passes after a few minutes, leaving Xiao Shu soaked in sweat and pale. Jingyan holds him against his chest, waiting for him to come to.

“Selfish,” It’s little more than a soft rasp. Jingyan remembers his and Xiao Shu’s last fight. Remembers himself hurling the same word at Xiao Shu’s trembling back.

“You were right. He _was_ selfish.” The Emissary opens his eyes. “I’m sorry. You deserved better.”

\---

Their first kiss had been when Jingyan was eleven, and Lin Shu was nine. Lin Shu had poked Jingyan on the shoulder and leaned in to give him a peck on the lips as fast as he could. He’d pulled away before Jingyan could react, and he’d quickly covered it up with a joke. Jingyan had been silent for most of the afternoon, but by evening they were back to their usual banter and roughhousing so Lin Shu had quickly shoved it under his list of things never to talk to Jingyan about ever again. Like the thing with the cockroach eggs and Jingyan’s Dad’s toothpaste. Or when he tied _his_ Dad’s friend’s annoying kid to a tree.

Lin Shu had never tried to kiss Jingyan again because he didn’t want Jingyan to get angry at him and leave. All things considered, there were a lot of things he never told Jingyan. He’d never said that the person who’d gotten the school bully expelled for stealing exam questionnaires was him (the bully had kept taking Jingyan’s lunch from him, and wouldn’t stop even when Jingyan told the teachers because his parents were rich enough that they let him do whatever he wanted. Luckily for everyone and unluckily for him, Lin Shu had seen where their teacher kept their exams. It was easy enough to sneak into the faculty room and jimmy the teacher’s desk open during break, then slip the questionnaires into the bully’s backpack when he was off terrorizing the other kids.). He also never told Jingyan how hard he’d worked to convince the other kids to vote him in as class president when their more popular classmate was also running  (Lin Shu had pulled out all stops and spread rumors, setting up traps so that the other candidate would embarrass himself, meanwhile convincing the other kids to talk to Jingyan about their problems so he would help them find a solution, from how to fix their failing grades to what to do to get their teachers to let them on a field trip).

He’d thought it would be like that forever. And then the summer he turned ten, Lin Shu had come home to his Mom saying she needed to tell him about something important. After, Lin Shu had run to Jingyan’s house, and the both of them had stayed up all night in Jingyan’s room. Not talking, just staying quiet. Lin Shu because he couldn’t trust himself not to start crying with the lump in his throat. Jingyan for probably the same reason.

 Jingyan’s hand had found his in the dark, and Lin Shu had held on. Until morning came and Auntie Jing knocked on the door, saying it was time for breakfast and could she please talk to the both of them after?

The day they saw Jingyan and his family off to the airport was the worst of Lin Shu’s life. This time he let the tears flow, and Jingyan hugged him so hard that it hurt. The grownups were away to the side, talking quietly when Jingyan turned to him and took a deep breath, leaned forwards. Just a light brush of Jingyan’s lips against his, and it was over. He was leaving.

Years passed. Though they’d written each other letters, that had petered out with the pace of their lives. Lin Shu grew up. And it’s ridiculous, but he never once stopped missing Jingyan. Never forgets about him, or the friendship they had.  

Lin Shu’s mother dies when he’s seventeen. Her last wish was for him not to follow his father’s footsteps in the military, but to take up her mantle in the sciences. Lin Shu being Lin Shu, he ends up compromising in a way that… probably wouldn’t make either side happy,  graduating with a double major in engineering and physics, then taking up a Masters  program for military technology. And then the Kaiju attacks happened.

Lin Shu was rushing down the corridor of his university, desperate to talk to his thesis adviser and someone from the government  who wanted to meet Lin Shu so they could discuss his research, an insane idea that he’d come up with that could very well save them all. And then he’d crashed right into a schmuck in a military uniform, standing still in the middle of the corridor. Lin Shu had looked up to yell at the whoever-it-was, and then stopped, staring.

Jingyan, in front of him in the flesh, was grinning. He didn’t look shocked at all.

“Are you the guy my adviser said I had to meet up with for my thesis?” Lin Shu asked, slightly dazed as Jingyan helped him pick his papers up.

“No,” Jingyan’s eyes were soft and fond. Lin Shu’s heart leaps, because he _remembers_ that expression. “My Mom’s the one who wants to talk to you. I wouldn’t mind chatting after, though. If you have time.”

Lin Shu didn’t. But the world was ending, and he missed Jingyan, and if they were all gonna die crushed between the jaws of toxic monsters or obliterated by nuclear bombs, he was bloody well going to have to make time. Which he did, and when the Pons system was perfected and the Jaeger program was initiated, no one was at all surprised when Jingyan and Lin Shu were assigned as partners and co-pilots of the first Mark-1 Jaeger ever built.

Their third kiss happens right after their first battle with a Kaiju. Lin Shu finds Jingyan on the roof of the Shatterdome, the both of them barely come down from the high of _beating that motherfucker to death_ with their fists. Jingyan’s leaning against the railing, breathing deeply. He smiles when Lin Shu tucks himself against his side.

“Xiao Shu,” His voice is very warm. And it’s ridiculous to feel this shy, because Jingyan has been in his head. Has known all there is to know, all that Lin Shu felt, and vice-versa. But they’d never acted on it in the months they’d spent together because –

… Lin Shu can’t remember the reasons why. Anyway, they’re no longer important. Jingyan is tracing his lips with the edge of his thumb. His eyes are very soft, and so is the texture of his lips when Lin Shu leans in and claims them. Soft, slightly dry, very warm. Lin SHu sighs, and he doesn’t know who deepens the kiss first but Lin Shu always remembers how neither of them ever wanted it to end.

They end up sleeping curled around each other in their bunker. Jingyan’s eyes fluttering shut as Kin Shu traces the scars and marks left by the army on Jingyan’s skin. And Lin Shu thinks to himself, greedily, about how he would always protect this. How the Kaiju could rip his world apart, but they will never take this away from him.

 

\---

 

They manage to find treatment that mitigates the seizures. From almost fifteen per day, Lin Shu is down to between seven and ten, spaced out enough for Lin Shu to function without Jingyan incessantly hovering. After how many months with his world narrowed down to four walls and a bed, Lin Shu will take any progress he can get.

Lin Chen sends him schematics of Jaegers still in the production line. Issues with design are scribbled in  red. Though Lin Shu had developed the technology, he’d never really been involved in the nitty gritty of design. Thankfully he’s a quick study, and his founder’s knowledge of the Pons system enables him to create workarounds for otherwise costly repair issues.

Fei Liu is the delivery boy. Lin Shu and Jingyan had been surprised when they heard the knock on the apartment door and in walked the boy with a blueprint tube strapped to his back. He’d filled-out some, and he looked far healthier than when Lin Shu had first rescued him.

( _Keep the boy with you for a few hours,_ Lin Chen’s note had read, rolled up along with the blueprints has a smear of strawberry jam on it. _Children are full of energy but they can only beat new trainees so often in the fightroom. Also he keeps asking for you and it’s getting annoying_.)

And so Jingyan found himself a little helper. If nothing else, at least the burden isn’t quite so heavy on his shoulders anymore. With Fei Liu, he doesn’t have to be in the same room all the time as Lin Shu, , doesn’t have to take care of him 24/7.

(Of course, Jingyan still insisted on doing all of the above, to Lin Shu’s frustration.)

He suspects Lin Chen’s just pacifying him by giving him something to do, and most certainly the first blueprints were for that very purpose. And then comes more complex projects. Lin Shu solves them easily enough, but then comes a design that has him completely stumped.

He calls Lin Chen up. “Given up yet?” Lin Chen asks cheerfully. Lin Shu rolls his eyes. Jingyan’s sitting beside him on the edge of the bed, eyeing the sea of blueprints and schematics with a slightly bemused air.

Lin Shu avoids his eyes, along with the concern on his face. Quashes down how much it rankles him to see how Jingyan can’t seem to look at him without that expression anymore. Jingyan’s been looking after him for six interminable months, if anyone had a right to feel impatient, or angry, it’s Jingyan and not him.

(He’d already snapped once at Jingyan today, all because Jingyan had caught him when Lin Shu had swayed the slightest bit off-balance.)

“Tell your engineer the design doesn’t make sense. I’m not sure if two people can pilot this properly considering everything that’s stuck to it. _You don’t need that many arms_.” A snicker.

“Come here yourself and tell them, then.” Lin Chen says cheerily. “That Jaeger’s meant for four people, by the way. Drift-compatible quadruplets. You still have a lot of training before you can be considered part of the team, so you’d better buckle down and study.”

“Yeah.” Lin Shu replies after a long pause. “I’ll be there.”

The relief that he feels when he’s back in the Shatterdome is overwhelming, but it’s short-lived. The last time he was here, he’d been a fighter. Now he’s seen as a hero, but that didn’t stop people from walking on eggshells around him. Always so solicitous, always so concerned. Always treating him like he’s something fragile, liable to shatter.

(He collapses in the lab. The first time it happens he’s so humiliated he can’t look Dr. Jing in the eye as she and Fei Liu help him up. Then it happens again and again, and what’s almost worse is how the other engineers quickly get used to it.)

Jingyan is the worst of them. One afternoon when he’s working on a particularly difficult design, Jingyan places a glass of water beside him and suggests – gently – maybe he should take a break.

“Jingyan, if the stress of this job isn’t going to give me a seizure _, then your incessant hovering will_.” He snaps. He regrets the words the moment they’re out, and Jingyan flinches back like Lin Shu slapped him.

“Xiao Shu,” Lin Shu lifts a shaking hand up. He doesn’t want to hear Jingyan apologize again.

_Stop looking at me like that._

“I have epilepsy, “ He says as calmly as he can. “But I’m not a complete invalid. You don’t have to hang around me all the time waiting to see if I’ll collapse.”

“Fei Liu can be my assistant,” Lin Shu continues ruthlessly. “You, you’re still an officer. The PPDC needs all the support it can get. Ask my Dad for something to do _. But for the love of God, Jingyan. Stop breathing down my neck.”_

It’s silent between them for a long, frozen moment. Lin Shu forces himself to look Jingyan in the face, to keep his expression cold and hard.

 _Stop looking at me like that. Please stop looking at me like that._ For a moment Lin Shu thinks Jingyan might yell at him, and he welcomes it. He would welcome a fight, any fight at this point. But Jingyan just takes a deep breath, nods.

“All right, Xiao Shu.” Jingyan says. “I’ll do that.” And Lin Shu knows of course, that Jingyan always does what he wants him to do.

“ _Thank you_ ,’” he says. He turns back to his work.  They don’t speak to each other for the rest of the evening.

\--

The One-way Drift had been Xia Jiang’s own pet project. Unlike the system Dr. Jing and Xiao Shu had developed, this hadn’t been meant for energy generation, but for interrogation. Using it, Jingyan could access the Emissary’s thoughts while blocking the latter from his own.

Jingyan hates it. It’s a perversion of everything his mother and Xiao Shu had created, and the ramifications of this type of technology falling into the wrong hands chills his blood. But what he hates about it the most is how wrong it feels to use it. Xiao Shu’s mind had always been so open for Jingyan. Now, his headspace is silent, empty. Completely desolate, and Jingyan has lost track of how much time he’s spent wandering around this place, ending up in the same darkened corridors and losing count of how many doors he’s opened to find nothing beyond them.  Banging on the locked door of the main hall, but it never opens.

He has to act fast. The Emissary had been drugged to the gills when he was under, but they couldn’t risk Xiao Shu overdosing. Jingyan curses when he finds himself in the main hall again, and he’s about to turn back, pick another door, another corridor when a sudden gust of wind brings in  a flurry of ice and snow so strong that Jingyan steps back, shielding his face, his teeth chattering.

The gust is gone as quickly as it came. Cautiously Jingyan lowers his arm, takes a cautious step forwards. Snow crunches beneath his feet, and another powerful gust of wind brings with it more ice from inside the house.

For a moment Jingyan wonders if this means the Emissary’s awake, but the manor doesn’t melt around him. So Jingyan takes a deep breath, follows the trail of wind and snow.

The trail leads him to, of all places, a room that resembles a scholar’s study. Scrolls line the shelves, and a large brazier sits beside a desk full of brushes and papers and ink stones. Jingyan frowns. This isn’t somewhere he remembers from Xiao Shu’s headspace. And then he sees the celadon tea set on the brazier.

The hairs on his arms stand up. He has to swallow to rid himself of the vile taste in his mouth. No wonder this place was so unfamiliar. This isn’t Xiao Shu’s mind he’s in anymore.

Jingyan begins pulling books and scrolls from the shelves, and when he opens them he isn’t at all surprised to find them full of blueprints and schematics, and names.  Jianghu Brawler. Winter Colossus. The Jaegers that fell during the Chiyan incident, and their pilots.

Another gust of wind. Jingyan drops the book, then he notices the snow on the floor. The bits of soft pink mingled with the white, leading to an open doorway between two bookshelves.

Jingyan doesn’t hesitate. If it’s a trap he stands more to lose by dithering. He plunges in, and the cold almost has the breath freeze in his lungs. He forces himself to keep going, and what he sees beyond the doorway  makes him stop. And stare, his heart pounding.

Before him is an empty expanse of white. Unbroken, pristine. Cold winds howl along the plain. Jingyan blinks. Looks around behind him, but Xiao Shu’s manor is gone.  Doesn’t matter. Jingyan presses on.

Slowly, the snow gives way to craggy, ice- covered rocks that make the terrain even more treacherous. Jingyan hurries, taking care not to slip – if he falls down, he’s not sure he’ll be able to get up again. And then he sees it. The cliffside. The plum trees blooming thickly amidst the desolation. Then, the emptiness beyond it.  Just endless, unformed black that had no breadth or depth.

“You don’t want to go there.” Mei Chang Su’s soft voice is a bare whisper in Jingyan’s ear, but somehow carries everywhere. Jingyan grits his teeth. A whisper of a sleeve brushes against his. Mei Chang Su, dressed in his scholar’s robes and a fur cloak, standing beside him. He wonders how long he’s been watching.

 “What do you think I’ll find if I jump?” Jingyan asks almost casually.

“Apart from satisfying the human need to self-destruct? A seizure. Your husband as well, which I’m sure you won’t want to risk.” Mei Chang Su answers mildly. “Your species has the strangest instincts. “  He tugs the cloak tighter around his shoulders, a movement so fluid, so human that hot anger curls in Jingyan’s belly. 

 “Maybe I’ll find something else.” He deliberately nudges a stone with his foot, watches it fall. Doesn’t miss the way Mei Chang Su tenses up beside him, lifting a hand and dropping it just as quickly when Jingyan turns to face him.

“Come away, Lieutenant Xiao,” He says quietly. “This place is not for you.” Jingyan takes a deep breath. Thinks of wrapping his arms around his husband’s shivering body, of warm lips tasting of tears.

_I’m sorry. You deserve better._

The corners of Jingyan’s lips curl into a snarl.

“You’ve been using Xiao Shu’s memories as a barrier.” He spits out. “A maze, keeping me trapped so I can’t access your mind.” He takes a step backwards, and Mei Chang Su stiffens in alarm. “That’s what you’re afraid of, aren’t you? We’re hooked up to the same system, and somewhere there,” he gestures towards the cliffside. “Your memories, your thoughts are lying defenceless.”

“My mind will rip yours apart.” Mei Chang Su’s voice is cold, laced tightly with alarm. Jingyan smiles.

“Only one way to find out.”  It only takes one push.

“JINGYAN, DON’T-“

A hand closes over his sleeve. Xiao Shu, dragging him along elsewhere, somewhere, excited about something and talking a mile a minute. Jingyan lets it wash over him because Xiao Shu had been away for a conference and it had been ages, ages since he’s seen him. He laces their fingers together and Xiao Shu looks so sad all of a sudden, why is that?

The Jaeger program. The first time he and Xiao Shu entered the Drift. Jingyan feeling the last of the barriers between him and Xiao Shu stripped away. He had been so afraid, but why, he can’t remember anymore. All he knows is the feeling of being together, being one. Xiao Shu with his hands in his and Jingyan hadn’t needed the Pons headset at all to know his thoughts when he kissed him, their matching rings gleaming under the morning light.

Xiao Shu, running. Jingyan following him, yelling at him to slow down, but his limbs feel like they’re underwater. They are underwater, and Jingyan’s exhausted, but Xiao Shu isn’t stopping, isn’t turning behind. And this is a bad idea, a abad idea, what did Marshall Lin say about chasing rabbits? But he can’t stop, he can’t, he needs to know, so when Xiao Shu disappears into the crack, the wound made by Mei Chang Su’s people in the fabric of this universe, he follows.

Fire. Heat. It’s warm here. So warm. He’s never warm outside, the human world is at once too cold and too bright. He’s shivering, and Jingyan frowns. He had a cloak, where did it go? He wraps it around slender shoulders. But it’s not. It’s not warm enough. They need to make this world warm enough.

Magma. Rivers of bright fire, snaking through a city of stone and light. The sky is dark, but scattered with stars, bright rips into the heart of space. The beasts, caged and obedient. Quiet, for now. Awaiting their turn in the chasm. It’s hot. It’s home.

A structure, built over a hole they had made in this world, and the next, and the next. They would not stop, they could not stop. One world could only sustain them for so long. They had destroyed this one too. When no one was watching he would stroke his long appendages over the delicate carvings the people they had killed had left behind. It is beautiful, so beautiful. They had been beautiful, too, but his people had needed this world. He feels wistful.

Flowers. They had never seen organic life forms like this. So many colors. Soft. The little juvenile in his arms loves them. Could spend hours just arranging all of them in a vase. He feels sad whenever the boy does, because these flowers won’t survive what they need to do, and neither will this child. But the boy keeps giving them to him anyway. “Su ge-ge’s favourite,” He insists. Su-gege. Not Shu-gege. The name is strange on his tongue.  As strange as the sensation of the child tending to him whenever this broken body suddenly started to malfunction, asking for nothing back but the occasional comb running through his hair as he dozed off against Mei Chang Su’s knee. Humans were such fragile things.

A smile. A memory of a smile. A deep voice murmuring soft words into his ear, and then that same voice screaming in pain. A machine – they call it a Jaeger, they power it with their shared minds – crumpling to its knees, its arm blown off to the elbow, the other hanging useless as its numb fingers dropped the great bow into the water. He had been watching, then. Watching as the machines fell because of the weaknesses he’s planted into them, screams of agony and the dead and dying all around him. He had not understood why  hearing this one  felt like he was being robbed of breath.

 _It won’t take long,_ he thinks to himself, they think to themselves, a multitude of them and they had only one goal. _The portal will stabilize soon._ More will come, and this world will be theirs. Just like all the ones before it.

Time. Time slipping past, folding into itself. Massive beasts roam the world, collapsing to ash and dust. But no, not enough. This place would not be able to sustain them. So they leave, back the way they came, but they watch. And then one organism turns into two, turns into four, turns into something else. Something very small and fragile and beautiful. This delicate shell of water and iron and carbon. Pierce them and they would empty themselves out, it took so little to kill them. Yet somehow, the heart beneath his palm still beats. The hands on his face are warm. It’s strange. He’s never warm here.

{He wants to be warm here.}

_I’m sorry. You deserve better._

A hand. A hand on his nape. Another over his heart. Xiao Shu’s expression is terrified. His nose is bleeding. So is Jingyan’s, the taste of iron thick in his mouth. There are sirens wailing, and Jingyan only realizes that his Pons headset has been ripped off. His thoughts thick and slow and woozy.

“Jingyan!” His husband is holding his face. His hands are so cold, and Jingyan clutches at them in alarm because he knows what this sign means. Sure enough, Xiao Shu’s face starts to twitch and he begins to convulse, thrashing so hard he falls off his chair. Jingyan catches him, keeping his head cradled, keeping him safe.

“Breathe.” Jingyan’s voice shakes. “ _Breathe_ , Xiao Shu. It’s all right. I’m here.” Xiao Shu takes a deep, shuddering breath, his eyes rolling to the back of his head as he passes out.

\---

“What’ll we do when the war ends?” He asks Jingyan. They’re pressed up beside each other on Foya’s wide helmet, of all places, and it’s so goddamn cold Lin Shu’s beginning to feel his toes go numb. But he can’t get enough of the stars here, the way they look like crushed glass on the richest black velvet, and so he’d dragged a complaining Jingyan out of their toasty warm bunker into the frigid sub-zero temperatures outside.

“Hmm. Not sure. Hole up in our old apartment and sleep for three months straight, I guess.” Jingyan hums. He has his arm wrapped around Lin Shu and has his face buried against his shoulder, something Lin Shu would have normally teased him for until he turned beet red but Jingyan had just retorted “You’re the one who dragged me out of bed, so I’m entitled to use you as my space heater.”

“Only sleep?” Lin Shu’s grin turns wicked. Jingyan smirks, nuzzles the end of his icy nose behind Lin Shu’s ear, snickering when Lin Shu yelps and tries to bat him away. 

“Cold! Stop that, you ass-“

“I thought you were the one who was never afraid of the cold?” But there’s a gentle nip of apology against the shell of Lin Shu’s ear. Lin Shu can barely feel his extremities but he has never felt warmer in his life.

“No, but seriously. What should we do?” Lin Shu turns in Jingyan’s arms. “Besides passing out in between having kinky hot sex, by the way.” Jingyan’s eyes are so soft. Not for the first time {nor the last}, Lin Shu feels butterflies flutter in his stomach.

Jingyan pauses for a moment, before slipping his hand into his pocket. And Lin Shu’s been in every inch and crevasse of Jingyan’s head, at this point almost knows his co-pilot’s mind as intimately as his own. So he’s completely unsurprised when Jingyan pulls out the small black velvet-lined box. Opening it to reveal the simple white gold band inside it.

“Figure out what it is that married couples do, I guess.” Jingyan says. He sounds almost shy, and Lin Shu wants to grab his shoulders and kiss the pink dusting on his cheeks into a raging blush. Which he promptly does a second later.

Hours later they’re in their bunker, wrapped around each other and tucked beneath half a dozen blankets. Lin Shu’s admiring the ring on his finger, watching the tiny, tiny diamond in the center of the band wink in the half-dark. Jingyan’s nuzzling kisses against the back of his neck.

“Does my plan sound good to you?” Lin Shu smirks, turns around and offers his mouth to his fiancé.

“The best.” He declares, feels Jingyan’s smile against his lips.

 ---

Jingyan has been talking for a better part of an hour. He’s back in the Marshall’s office, and besides Marshall Lin, the two heads of the science department are there. So is Lin Chen, his expression grim, twirling the crucifix pendant he’s wearing between his fingers.  

“Tell me again what you found out about the Breach.” Marshall Lin says. Jingyan’s voice cracks from how dry his throat is and he winces, takes a sip of water.

 “There’s going to be more,” The plastic is creased beneath his fingers; damn near crushed from how tightly he’d been holding onto it, like a lifeline. “They’re just waiting for the Breach to stabilize, then they’ll colonize in earnest.” Dr. Jing places a hand on Jingyan’s shoulder, squeezing lightly.  

“We already know this. Since two years ago we’ve observed the intervals between attacks were getting shorter.”  Her calm voice soothes the tension rattling around his chest, the overwhelming sensation of _unreality_ he’d been feeling ever since he pulled out of the Emissary’s mind just a couple of hours ago. Everything too much, too strange. Xiao Shu’s smile bright and tender as Jingyan followed him into the dark.

 _Breathe._ Jingyan does. It flows back out of him in a shaky rush.

 “What I’d like to know more about is what the Emissary meant by the Breach stabilizing.” It’s a moment before Jingyan realizes his mother’s speaking to him. He looks up.

“The Breach can only be used at specific intervals, “ Jingyan says. “Even on their side. I didn’t find out when it would happen, only that it would be soon. Once  the Breach is permanently open, the Kaiju will be able to come in by droves and finish the job.”

 _Extinction._ Jingyan remembers long fingers brushing against carved stone. The hollow remnants of worlds, decimated and drained.

_Breathe._

“-If it’s stable enough for things to go through, then it’s stable enough for things to get in.” Dr. Jing says, her expression thoughtful. She’s looking at Marshall Lin. Marshall Lin is twisting the end of his watch strap, deep in thought, then he turns to Lin Chen.

“Are you still in contact with Xuanji of the Hua group?” Lin Chen pushes himself off the shelf he was leaning against. His knuckles are white around his rosary.

“Xuanji herself is near-impossible to find, but she has an agent operating in the Bone Slums. Qin Banruo.” His glance darts to Dr. Jing. “She’ll ask for a steep price, whatever it is you ask for. It’s the Hua way.”

“Arrange a meeting between her and Marshall Lin. Tell her that Xiao Jingyi sent you,” Dr. Jing says. She hands Lin Chen a red card and a UV pen, shining the light on it to show the printed symbol. “Money won’t be an issue. Xuanji likes living in this world as much as we do.” Lin Chen raises an eyebrow as he accepts the card.

“I’ll hold you to that. Hopefully name-dropping you won’t get me automatically tossed to the Kaiju cultists’ tender mercies.” He gives Jingyan a brisk nod, heads out.

 When he’s gone, that’s when Marshall Lin leans forwards. He tries to keep his features controlled but there’s the light of desperate, painfully familiar hope in his eyes.

 “You’re sure that was Xiao Shu?” He asks without preamble.

_A warm hand in his. Hurry up, Jingyan._

“Yeah,” Jingyan says. “I felt him. He led me there.” He narrates everything he saw and felt, leaving out no detail. Trying to ignore Dr. Xia’s presence in the room, focusing instead on his mother’s soft, eternally calm face. On Marshall Lin’s desperately cautious hope.

 “Are you certain it was Lt. Lin?” Dr. Xia says, when he finishes. “You’ve told us before that the Emissary frequently takes on your husband’s appearance to confound you into breaking the connection.” Jingyan shakes his head.

“It’s different, this time.” Jingyan barely keeps himself from snapping. Willing himself to relax, to speak the words as carefully as possible. “I _felt_ him. Certain emotions… He was _there.”_ Jingyan stops, breathing hard.

“And there were times - instances where it felt like he was controlling the Emissary. Keeping him from throwing me out, or hurting me.” He says the last part softly. Marshall Lin’s expression is a study in control. “He ripped off my Pons headset to stop me from overloading.” Immediately after Jingyan had asked to see the CCTV footage of that session. Trembling as he watched the video, the moment he began to convulse and the Emissary darted forward, catching him as he fell from his seat and ripping his headset off.

It’s a while before Marshall Lin speaks.

“That’s not something we can take your word for, Jingyan.” He says. “Unfortunately, Dr. Xia is right. We can’t be sure if that was really Xiao Shu or the Emissary is leading us to another trap. I prefer to err on the side of the latter. We cannot risk any more people as is.” Jingyan bites back the instinctive protest. 

 “What would you have me do?” He asks. Marshall Lin and Dr. Jing exchange another look. If ever there was a more Drift compatible couple, Jingyan thinks. His mother has never piloted a Jaeger herself, but Jingyan knows full well who her co-pilot would have been.

“Keep to your assigned task.” Dr. Jing says. “You need to be one step ahead of whatever the Emissary’s planning. Maybe today was a slip, maybe he’s setting up a trap.”

“Understood, Sir” Jingyan says. Dr. Jing gives his shoulder another squeeze.

“You’re dismissed for the day, Jingyan. Stay close, we might need you.”  The last thing Jingyan sees before the door to the conference room swing shut are the three officers, heads bent close as Dr. Jing points to a map of the Breach.

It gets better. Somewhat. At least, Jingyan isn’t hovering anymore. Marshall Lin has kept him busy with tasks, training new recruits and generally making him a more useful part of the PPDC than Lin Shu’s nursemaid. Lin SHu can work in peace designing new Jaeger equipment. After a while, he moves onto actual Jaegers. Though their size and fight history  were impressive, there’s no escaping the fact the older ones cobbled together from scraps and existing machinery. Lin Shu frowns as he assesses his designs for the Mark-5 Jaegers, already taking note of which parts ought to be reinforced, which ought to be changed, which out to be scrapped entirely.

Fei Liu is with him, arranging flowers in a vase. Form time to time he glances at Lin Shu, checking on him. Lin Shu smiles, and he goes back to his flowers, satisfied. He’s always more patient with Fei Liu than with anyone else who tried to take care of him. Maybe it was a factor that Fei Liu had never known the old him, but. It’s easier somehow. Just as it’s easier with him to forget about his injuries, while he read to him during his spare time and let him try new treats, let him natter endlessly on about his training sessions in the Fightroom  when the seizures were too bad for him to get out of bed.

 Fei Liu asked for so little and it was so easy to give him the world in return. Lin Shu feels a pang in his chest as he leans down, ruffles the kid’s hair.

A knock. Fei Liu springs up and answers it before Lin Shu can say he can answer it himself. He sighs, lowers his pen. Fei Liu comes back with Jingyan by the hand. One look at the expression on Jingyan’s face and Lin Shu knows he has nothing good to tell him.

“Fei Liu,” Lin Shu says. “Go out and play with Uncle Meng for a bit. Yan-gege and I need to talk.” Fei Liu hesitates a little, but at Lin SHu’s encouraging smile, he obeys.

The door shuts behind him, and Lin SHu and Jingyan are alone in the lab. All the others had gone to the mess hall for lunch. Lin Shu fiddles with the edge of his sleeve.

He can’t remember the last time he was alone with Jingyan, except when they were in their bunker together, alone in the dark.Silent while Lin Shu pretended to sleep.

“What’s wrong, Jingyan?” Lin SHu asks. The dread is a hard knot in his belly. Jingyan opens his mouth closes it again.

“Jingyan. Talk.” Only then does Jingyan look him in the eye at the same moment he stands to go over to him.

“They’re recruiting a new partner for me,” Jingyan says. Lin Shu freezes.

“They’re. What.” His voice is quiet. He’s gripping the edge of his desk so tightly his fingers are aching. Jingyan makes a move to support him, to hold him, but he jerks away. It’s a while before Jingyan lowers his arms again, looking crushed. And Lin Shu wants nothing more than to comfort him but he can’t make himself move.

“Marshall Lin. He,” Jingyan’s forcing himself to look Lin Shu in the eye. “There’s a shortage of qualified pilots, and he said it’s more practical to find me a new partner rather than assign a fresh team to handle Foya.”

“… That’s a logical decision.” Lin Shu forces himself to speak through numb lips. “Of course you’ll need a new partner. You’re still perfectly capable of piloting a Jaeger.” He turns back to his design, but he can’t see the paper in front of him. Just. Blankness.

“I don’t _want_ a new partner.” Jingyan snaps. He sounds frustrated, so frustrated. He grabs Lin Shu by the shoulders, forcibly turning him around and Lin Shu quells the sudden surge of _want,_ because he’s _missed_ this, Jingyan not treating him like figurine made of porcelain, ready to break.

“I want _you.”_ Jingyan says. His eyes are full of heat, and Lin Shu’s breath catches as Jingyan’s hands possessively cup his waist. “I want only _you.”_ and Lin Shu for once in a solid fucking year doesn’t hold himself back, yanks his husband towards him and crushes their mouths together.

The kiss is hot, hungry, desperation flavouring every inch of it, every gasp and every push of their bodies together. Jingyan shoves Lin Shu down over his desk, the curve of his slender body solid and warm beneath Lin Shu’s hands as he pushes his shirt up, off. Lin Shu whines when Jingyan pulls away from his lips, then gasps as Jingyan’s mouth finds the furious beat of his pulse. Suckling and nuzzling at his throat until Lin Shu’s arching his hips and moaning, shameless, not giving a fuck about the passers-by that might hear.

“Jingyan,” Lin Shu whispers. It peters out into a cry when Jingyan’s teeth close on the delicate skin and bite down, Lin Shu’s hands scrabbling for purchase on Jingyan’s back, raising welts. A hot, angry gladness filling him up when Jingyan grunts in pain because _there,_ he’s left a mark, Jingyan is _his_ alone.

“Jingyan-“ Another hard kiss. Lin Shu opens his mouth for it, welcoming the heat and Jingyan’s tongue. Jingyan makes a surprised noise that trails off into a gasp as Lin Shu’s legs wrap around his hips, bringing him closer. He’s hard, so hard, and so is Jingyan, judging by the wet spot on his khaki pants, the bass groan that spills out of him as Lin Shu arches against him. It’s quick work to unbutton and push down his pants and underwear, even quicker for Jingyan to tug down his. Lin Shu moans when Jingyan grabs their cocks, squeezing them together, clever fingers moving up and down and even the catch of dry skin against skin feels so fucking good. Jingyan kisses him again, and Lin Shu melts. Tangling his fingers with Jingyan as they work a steady rhythm between them. 

Somehow, Jingyan still retains enough presence of mind to brush a kiss against Lin Shu’s forehead, then his nose.  

“Lube?” A familiar, mischievous smile spreads across Lin Shu’s lips. It makes his cheeks ache, he hasn’t smiled for so long.

“Top drawer,” he says, thanking his lucky stars that he’d dropped it there rather than throw it into the garbage bin when he’s transferred his things. Laughing silently at Jingyan’s awkward scrabble for it as he refuses to let go of them both. Jingyan emerges with it in hand triumphant, and Lin Shu laughs before he can stop himself.

Jingyan pauses. Lin Shu realizes he can’t remember when he last laughed, either. But he really doesn’t want to think of that now.

“Jingyan,” He snaps, annoyed and impatient and his body humming with need. “ _Hurry.”_ Jingyan doesn’t need telling twice. Liberally coating his hand and slipping his fingers between Lin Shu’s legs and the moment Jingyan breaches him, Lin Shu goes boneless with relief.

It’s slow. A counterpoint to their frenetic pace earlier. Jingyan works Lin Shu open gently. Spreading him open as luxuriously slowly as he had their honeymoon night. Lin Shu gasping, needy, but he doesn’t tell Jingyan to hurry, not for this. One finger, then two, then three. But pretty soon he’s writhing with impatience beneath Jingyan, showering his lips with sharp, frantic kisses.

“Jingyan. _Please.”_ And Jingyan always does whatever Lin Shu wanted him to do, so he does. His own hands trembling as he uses up the last of the lube. And when he enters Lin Shu, it feels like completion.

Lin Shu remembers, hazily, their first Drift together. All his defences down, all of a sudden, and he’d never beenso bare and so vulnerable in his life. But through it all, he had felt so safe. Jingyan smiling at him like he’s smiling now. So much gentleness, so much _love._ Lin Shu brushes Jingyan’s tears away with his palms, kisses him.

“Don’t cry,” he whispers. Kisses him again, mouth falling open as Jingyan thrust in deep, deeper. Slowly but surely picking up his pace. Lin Shu’s mouth falling open and Jingyan takes advantage of this by dropping kiss after kiss against his mouth. Tasting him, making every inch of Lin Shu his.

“Xiao Shu…” Jingyan trails off, then grunts. Lin Shu’s eyes flutter shut as he feels the heat spill inside of him, keeping his legs locked tight around Jingyan’s waist, and it’s bare seconds later that he comes. The force of it making him go boneless, his eyes burning.

He comes to in Jingyan’s arms, his clothes half-tugged on, Jingyan cradling him against his chest and Lin Shu completely drained, the taste of blood in his mouth, and _oh fuck did I have another seizure._ He flushes, ashamed, but Jingyan holds fast to him. Looking at him with those eyes.

“I love you,” Jingyan whispers. And Lin Shu is tired, so tired. So for once he doesn’t pull away, leaning his head against his husband’s throat.

“I love you too,” he says. His voice trembles with unshed tears. “So much.”  He takes a deep breath.  Wills them away.

They’re quiet for a long time together. Lin Shu lazily watches the clock. Almost 2PM and the rest of Jaegertech hadn’t arrived. Yup. They _definitely_ heard. Pride flickers in his chest but he doesn’t let himself bask in it. In this.

He sits up. Places both his hands on Jingyan’s face.

“Say yes,” He says. Jingyan blinks.

“Xiao Shu,” And there, that familiar irritated anger again.

“ _Please_ , Jingyan. Don’t feel guilty on my account.” Lin Shu says sharply, tugging away from Jingyan. The aftermath of the seizure makes his limbs twitch, and he winces, flinching away when Jingyan tries to steady him.

“The PPDC needs you. Hell, the whole goddamn _world_ needs you more than me.” He says. Jingyan doesn’t answer, just watches him quietly.

“Say yes. You need to be in a Jaeger, and as much as I want to _I can’t be with you anymore.”_   Lin Shu says. It kills him with every syllable to say it. “So you had better get a partner that’s as good as me, understand?”

Jingyan is silent. Lin Shu grits his teeth in frustration. _You stubborn water buffalo…_

“I understand,” Jingyan finally says, like his every limb is being torn from his body with how he forces it through gritted teeth. Lin Shu sighs. It’s relief, but for what he doesn’t know.

“I’ll protect you. With every way I know how, I’ll protect you.” Lin Shu says. Every word is practically snarled out as he grabs hold of Jingyan’s shoulders, shaking him for good measure. “But you need to fight. For us. For the world.”

“I understand” Jingyan says again. He grabs tightly onto Lin Shu’s arms, and Lin Shu shudders, closes his eyes. Buries himself in Jingyan’s warmth.

\----

 

The garden is the closest thing to a refuge Jingyan has. Somehow, flowers still bloom here, and the air smells less polluted. Jingyan leans heavily back against his favourite tree – a sweeping plum tree, its branches still bare but glorious when in full bloom – lets out a shaky exhale.

A ring. Jingyan takes out his phone with shaking hands. His nephew’s name flashes on the screen. He presses the call button, holds it to his ear.

“Hey, Tingsheng,” His voice rasps. “What’s the problem?”

“Hello, Uncle Jingyan,” Tingsheng greets him, his voice as soft and polite as always. Almost formal. Guilt twinges in his chest. He’d only ever seen his nephew in person a handful of times. His nephew knew the students of Langya University better than his own family.

“What’s the problem? Why’re you calling?” He asks.

“Nothing. I mean, nothing’s the matter.” Hesitation. “Grandpa Lin told Laoshi to have me call you.” Jingyan feels his lip twitch into a smile. The kid was too honest for his good. Since losing his parents (Jingyu-ge in the first Kaiju attack, Tong-dasao to cancer several years later), Tingsheng had been tucked away as far inland as Jingyan and his mother could ensure, safe in Langya University with Lin Chen’s father.

“Are you okay, Uncle Jingyan?” Tingsheng asks. Jingyan closes his eyes.

“Everything’s fine.” He replies.

“Okay.” TIngsheng doesn’t sound convinced. He chatters for a few more minutes, but then he’s called away for his next lesson, and hangs up after saying goodbye. Jingyan holds onto his phone a moment longer before putting it away. Takes up his cigarette again.

He lights it up. It was a habit both he and Xiao Shu had picked up in Siberia out of sheer necessity, where it was so cold that Jingyan could feel his marrow freezing. Jingyan had made Xiao Shu quit as soon as they’d been reassigned, but lately he’d taken it up again during times of severe stress. Jingyan figures that between the irradiated oceans and the Jaegers’ nuclear cores, fretting about cancer is a thing of the past. He’ll take whatever peace he can get.

His fingers are still shaking as he tries to switch on his lighter. It takes a while for him to light up. But when he’s about to take a drag, the following moment has him blinking , the cigarette rolling to a stop along the cobblestone walkway, its lighted tip going out. Jingyan stares for a moment, then looks up at the branches of the plum tree.

 A small, angry face scowls back at him from its perch on one of the lower branches. And then Jingyan remembers this had been Fei Liu’s favourite spot as well, when he first came here.

 _Flowers._ He thinks of plum blossoms mingled with flakes of snow, Mei Chang Su in Xiao Shu’s body, the slight bemusement making his lips twitch up as Fei Liu gave him a branch of plum blossoms in a vase. Of TIngsheng’s voice, small and hopeful from over a thousand miles away. He and Xiao Shu had both wanted Fei Liu to meet Tingsheng.

  _Su-gege._

His head hurts. Jingyan takes a deep breath.

“I’m sorry, Fei Liu.” Jingyan apologizes. “I’ll go somewhere else.” But when he picks up his cigarette – no use letting it go to waste with rationing as is – Fei Liu lets out a frustrated little hiss. Jingyan stares at him, and Fei Liu reaches down – practically dangling from the branch– swipes the cigarette from between Jingyan’s fingers.

“No. No smoking.” Fei Liu says sternly. “Bad.” Tearing up the cigarette and sticking the bits of it into his pocket. Jingyan stares at him. Lin Chen loathed smoking as a rule, while Meng Zhi on occasion went through a pack a day out of stress. Lin Chen  must have trained Fei Liu to confiscate the latter’s cigarettes to prevent him from inhaling secondhand smoke.  

“All right,” Jingyan replies. He smiles in spite of himself. It feels strange on his mouth. “No smoking.” Fei Liu nods in satisfaction, but before he can lean back against his tree he frowns again, points at Jingyan’s right eye.

“Hurt!” he says. Jingyan lifts his hand lightly touches his eyelid. A bloody iris was a sign of neural overload.

“It’s all right, Fei Liu.” He tries to reassure the boy. “It doesn’t hurt. I’ll be fine.” Fei Liu’s still frowning. In a flash, he’s clambered down, landing in a crouch beside Jingyan. He has his pillow tucked beneath his arm, and he takes it, wads up his jacket on the clear space between the plum tree’s roots, and places the pillow on top. Then he tugs on Jingyan’s pants. Gives another tug when Jingyan just stares at him.

“You’re sick.” Fei Liu says. He gives another insistent tug on Jingyan’s pants, and Jingyan slowly lies down. Tries to find a position that won’t get him roots digging into his back as he places his head on the pillow. Fei Liu nods, satisfied, plopping down to sit cross legged beside him. His chin in his hands as he watches Jingyan closely.

The pillow is slightly flattened with use, the polyester stuffing worn into clumps. Xiao Shu’s pillow, for whenever the seizures made him collapse. Fei Liu would notice a seizure incoming even before Xiao Shu felt it, would tug Xiao Shu down, settling his head on the pillow so he wouldn’t injure himself. Meng Zhi had told Jingyan that Fei Liu had been carrying it around the Seoul Shatterdome for the better part of a year and a half. Only when they were in Iron General would he entrust the pillow to Lin Chen, under strict orders from Fei Liu and Meng Zhi alike both to keep it safe.

 “Sleep!” Fei Liu says sternly. He places a hand over Jingyan’s eyes. His hand is warm, fingers slightly sticky and smelling of chocolate syrup.

“I’m not sleepy, Fei Liu,” Jingyan says gently. Fei Liu doesn’t take his hand away. Wryly, Jingyan thinks that Xiao Shu had probably  neglected himself so badly that Fei Liu had grown mistrustful over any and all pronouncements of health. So he sighs, lets Fei Liu force him to rest.  

The weather’s starting to get cool. The wind sighs through the branches of the plum tree, though it’s a while before they’ll bloom yet. Sleep eludes Jingyan, even with Fei Liu keeping his eyes closed.

 _I thought you were angry at me._ Jingyan thinks but does not say aloud.

“Do you like playing with Uncle Meng?” Jingyan asks instead.

“Yeah,” Fei Liu answers, remembering that Jingyan can’t see his nod. Something in Jingyan’s chest twists. For Fei Liu playing was the same as fighting was the same as war. He’s only fourteen.

“That’s good.” Jingyan says. And perhaps Fei Liu hears how his voice breaks, because Jingyan’s suddenly staring at Fei Liu’s upside-down face.

“Yan-gege’s sad?” Fei Liu asks. Jingyan nods, not trusting himself to speak.

“Misses Su-gege like me?” It’s a moment before Jingyan answers.

“Yes, Fei Liu.” Jingyan replies. Fei Liu watches him quietly. His expression has always been hard to read, but the last time Fei Liu had seen Xiao Shu, he had been screaming, held back by Jingyan as the Emissary was taken away in handcuffs.

(He’d cried as Jingyan tried to explain, but Jingyan – still reeling from from having Foya’s arrow explode in her grip and take Zhanying’s arm with it- couldn’t explain what had happened well enough for him to understand. Fei Liu had hit him, and hit him, and hit him, and Jingyan could barely feel it. Then he’d collapsed sobbing into Jingyan’s arms, and Jingyan had held onto him until he cried himself to sleep.)

_The texture of keratin is strange but soft against his palms as he runs a comb through the boy’s hair. He keeps his touch gentle as the boy leans his head against his knee. It’s strange to be needed like this. Humans were such fragile things._

“Do you want to see your Su-gege?” Jingyan asks before he can stop himself, before he can think better of it. Fei Liu’s eyes go so wide they’re like two shiny coins, nodding so hard that his ponytail almost hits Jingyan on the face.

Which is how Jingyan finds himself asking for a security clearance from Dr. Jing, Fei Liu practically hopping from one foot to another in excitement. Dr. Jing hesitates, but mercifully Xia Jiang isn’t here to counter her when Jingyan takes her aside.

“I already warned Fei Liu not to say anything about the Jaeger program or his partnership with Meng-dage.” Jingyan murmurs. “I’ll be there the whole time to make sure the Emissary doesn’t try to get any information out of him.”

“Jingyan, it’s not wise.” Dr. Jing keeps her voice low. “Fei Liu cannot distinguish between Xiao Shu and Mei Chang Su. Even if he doesn’t let anything slip, the Emissary might manipulate him into causing harm.”

“I won’t let him.” Jingyan places both hands on his mother’s shoulders, and Dr. Jing falls silent at the seriousness in his expression. “Mom, trust me. I will never let Fei Liu get hurt. But-“ He takes a deep breath.

“Xiao Shu was the closest thing he had to a father.” Jingyan says, his voice hoarse.  “Fei Liu needs to see him, just once. Then maybe..” He trails off.

“… Maybe you can get Xiao Shu to resurface.” Dr. Jing finishes.  Jingyan can’t look her in the eye. She sighs.

“I’ll give you the clearance.” She says and Jingyan’s heart leaps. “Dr. Xia will cause trouble when he hears about this.”

“I’m sorry, Mom.” Dr. Jing sighs. Reaches up to stroke Jingyan’s cheek.

“Watch them closely. Never let the Emissary speak to Fei Liu alone.” Jingyan nods.

“Understood.” The prison door slides open when Dr. Jing types in the code, and Fei Liu skip-runs to them. Grinning, the pillow and a small bunch of flowers in his hands.

The Emissary is sitting up, awake. His head hanging down, likely woozy  from the aftermath of a seizure. But he looks up, startled when Fei Liu happily cries out his name.

“Su-gege!” The Emissary opens his arms just in time before Fei Liu’s throwing himself into them. 

“Fei Liu.” The boy pulls back just enough to push the small handful of flowers he was carrying into his chest. Orchids, from the garden. The Emissary strokes the petals, unblemished and delicate. Fei Liu frowns when he doesn’t respond. Hugs him again, and Jingyan steps forward. This was a mistake, Fei Liu would just get hurt again, how could Jingyan be so selfish -

“I missed you.” Fei Liu says, voice muffled. The Emissary sets the orchids down on his bed. His arms wrap slowly around the boy. His eyes when he meets Jingyan’s eyes over the top of Fei Liu’s head are unreadable.

“You’ve gotten so big,” Mei Chang Su’s voice is little more than a low murmur, muffled against the crown of Fei Liu’s head, but Jingyan still hears the way the words catch.  “And your hair’s gotten so long. I’m sorry I don’t have a comb.” He falls silent. Jingyan remembers with a pang  that he doesn’t know who used to comb Fei Liu’s always too-long hair for him. If Xiao Shu had been the one to start doing it or Mei Chang Su.

“That’s okay,” Fei Liu says. He pulls away, plops down on the floor beside Mei Chang Su’s feet. Rests his head against his knee and closes his eyes. As Jingyan watches, Mei Chang Su pushes his fingers into Fei Liu’s hair, stroking until the boy falls asleep.

\----

Jingyan gets a partner. Lie Zhanying, an officer who served under him in the military. They’re well-matched. Lin Shu keeps an ear on the Ranger gossip pool even as he stays holed up in Jaegertech’s lab. _Almost as good as his partnership with Lin Shu, they’re going to be great together. Have you heard where Lin Shu is now?_

When Lin Shu hears about it, he ends up ripping up his updates on Foya’s design, throwing each crumpled ball into the garbage bin. Then he rings up Meng Zhi, asks to be allowed to view the new Jaeger team’s training session.

“It’s standard procedure, Meng-dage.” Lin Shu says flatly. Observing pilots’ fighting styles was a crucial element of Jaeger design, and since Lin Shu couldn’t watch videos for too long without risking a seizure, he preferred to take notes live. The whispers and stares were things he didn’t care for, but he grits his teeth against it. Endures.

 “ _Yes,_ but Xiao Shu,” Meng Zhi’s voice drops. Lin Shu patiently waits for him to answer, his fingers twisting his sleeve.

“Look, everyone and their crew members know about your and Jingyan’s problems.” And oh, Lin Shu can see the wince and internal slap Meng Zhi’s giving himself over his choice of words. “No, what I mean is – Xiao Shu, they’ve still got a lot of training to go. Maybe it’s best if you hold off a bi-“

“Foya needs to be repaired and updated as quickly as possible,” He says flatly. “I am not letting our marital problems get in the way of Jingyan’s safety.” He hangs up. Tries – and fails - to feel gratified when several minutes later, he gets a notification from Meng Zhi about Jingyan and Zhanying’s Fightroom schedule.

Fei Liu glances at him, worried. He tries to smile at him. He thinks a little more, then sends a reply. _Don’t tell Jingyan I’ll be there._ He tries very hard not to think of Jingyan training with someone else. Drifting with someone else. Being with someone who isn’t him.

(He fails at it anyway. )

The Fightroom isn’t particularly crowded when he arrives, full of new trainees he doesn’t know the names of, but he still squares his shoulders at the quiet whispers, the turning heads. Fei Liu immediately perks up when he sees Meng Zhi, and when Lin Shu nods and squeezes his hand, he peels off, Meng Zhi roaring in delight when the boy tackles his side. _Drift compatible,_ Lin Shu thinks, observing them play-fight. Fei Liu’s still very young, and frankly Lin Shu never wants him to ever have to ride a Jaeger, but the possibility is there.

Meng Zhi’s panting, barely holding of Fei Liu’s punches when he talks to Lin Shu. “They’ll be here in a few minutes. I think Marshall Lin’s talking to Jingyan.”

“Let me just set things up, then.” Lin Shu says. He’s already set up his camera when Jingyan and his new partner arrive. Jingyan does a double-take when he sees him.

“Xiao Shu,” And there it was again, that damned flicker of guilt. Lin Shu stares back at him evenly. They hadn’t spoken together properly since that afternoon in the lab. They’d both been busy – rather, Lin Shu had kept them both busy -and frankly, an hour of badly-needed fucking wasn’t going to solve anything.

They still sleep together at night. Jingyan curled around Lin Shu, like he can still protect him that way. Jingyan still takes care of him no matter how much Lin Shu snaps at him, still catches him when he passes out. And Lin Shu. Lin Shu wishes he would just _stop._

Lie Zhanying is quiet as he watches them. Lin Shu nods at him in greeting and he bows back. He’s a little younger than Lin Shu expected. Lin Shu’s heard of him before- he’d been one of Marshall Lin’s most promising recruits right before Lin Shu’s last ride.

 _You’d better be the best._ Lin Shu thinks. _I’m trusting you with my husband’s life._

“Let’s get on it with it.” Lin Shu says aloud. He avoids Jingyan’s eyes as the two gather up their kendo staves. And then without preamble, they began to fight.

Zhanying is _fast._ Faster than Lin Shu was. _A streetfighter from Hong Kong._ Marshall Lin had said. It showed in his fighting style, the unexpected moves he had which was a counterpoint to Jingyan’s brutal efficiency. It had been what made his and Lin Shu’s partnership work so well, Lin Shu’s tactical inventiveness combined with Jingyan’s relentless strikes –

_“Co-pilots,” Lin Shu had grinned at Jingyan, holding up the hand with the ring on it. “Partners for life, remember?”_

The fight ends in an even draw. Jingyan and Zhanying bow, and Jingyan immediately heads towards Lin Shu. Fei Liu gives him a rare sunny grin as Jingyan squeezes his shoulder.

“I didn’t know you’d be here.” Jingyan says. Lin Shu shrugs.

“I had to be.” He starts packing up, switching off his camera and shutting his notebook closed. “I’ve seen what I came here for. Fei Liu, come on. Time to go back.” Jingyan grabs him by the wrist.

“Xiao Shu,” Lin Shu tugs his arm back. 

“Not now, Jingyan.” He says. He doesn’t look at Jingyan as he departs. The whispers follow him all the way to the door.

\---

 

Jingyan continues Drifting with the Emissary. Now he knows what to look for, it gets easier and easier for him to look for things that can be useful. On the downside, now it’s getting harder and harder to actually remain in Drift with him. Often Jingyan ended up forced out, the connection broken even before the session had even begun. Worse were the times Xiao Shu ended up convulsing, and they had to unhook him from the Pons system, Jingyan holding him until the seizure passes. A lump in his throat as he looks down at Xiao Shu’s sleeping face, so pale and still and vulnerable.

The handful of times he succeeds, he always ends up back in Xiao Shu’s manor, following the trail of snow and petals. It’s ever-present now, though it never led to the same place. One time Jingyan had gone through a door and found himself in what seemed like a factory, a nightmare assembly line of kaiju parts being stitched and fused together before they were released into a massive pit and left to slaughter each other. Another and he’d stumbled onto a congregation of towering creatures over twelve feet tall, with phosphorescent blue eyes and too many limbs. One had stared at him for far too long and before Jingyan could move the neural bridge had collapsed. The Emissary was blinking at him dazedly, just roused from his medicated sleep. He slips back under a few seconds later.

“We need to get him to talk.” Marshall Lin says. There had been another Kaiju attack just yesterday. Yunnan’s Pride had put it down, but the interval had narrowed to one kaiju attack every six months to once in three.  

“No. _I_ need to talk to him,” Jingyan says. It had been two months since he found his way into the Emissary’s mind, but he hadn’t felt a flicker of Xiao Shu’s presence apart from the trail of snow. And Jingyan might have his own selfish reasons but the longer he stays in the Emissary’s mind the more convinced he is that the way to get him to him is through Xiao Shu. His husband, protecting him even as his body has been taken and his mind is no longer his own.

“Can you arrange for the Emissary to not be sedated the next time I see him?” Marshall Lin looks doubtful, but he acquiesces.

The Emissary is awake the next time Jingyan returns to the prison cell. His hands are cuffed together, and Jingyan has to remind himself to breathe when he notices how skinny Xiao Shu’s gotten. The Emissary is also shivering, and Jingyan remembers the hot, dry darkness of the Precursors world.

“I’m not sedated, am I?” The Emissary asks. He does not look at Jingyan. “I can’t recall the past few days, but I can tell because it’s so cold.”

“They’re not letting you up until you start answering questions.” Jingyan replies. The Emissary snorts. The sound and gesture is all Xiao Shu’s.

“Then we will be here for a very long time.” His eyes are turned away, but Jingyan knows without seeing them how they probably look right now: sharp and hard. Angry. With himself as much as with Jingyan. “I don’t think you have that luxury. They will send more world-scourers. It’s only a matter of time.”

“Then we’ll just beat them back. We always have.” Jingyan stands, takes off his jacket and settles it around the Emissary’s shoulders. This earns him a startled glance, hastily papered over by indifference, and he has to stop himself from tilting Xiao Shu’s face towards him, stopping him from hiding. 

“You never mentioned how cold you always were.” Is what Jingyan finally says, a little weakly. The Emissary stares at him again, this time his expression is its usual calm.

“My people can withstand being submerged in boiling oceans and molten rock. I’m not just cold in your world; I’m close to freezing.” The Emissary’s fingers close around the jacket collar. Pure muscle memory is what has Jingyan take him by the hand.

(Xiao Shu had never needed Jingyan to keep him warm but he had loved being held by him all the same.)

The Emissary freezes, then pulls away at the same moment Jingyan drops his hand. His expression is shuttered closed, Xiao Shu’s expressive eyes rendered lightless and chillingly empty. Jingyan forces himself to stare back.

Then, a flicker. A ripple of something almost like curiosity. Jingyan’s immediately wary. Moreso when the Emissary tilts his head, eyes narrowing like he’s making a decision.

“Do you want to see it?” The Emissary asks. Jingyan frowns.

“See what?” 

“My world,” The corners of the Emissary’s lips twitch up at the surprise on Jingyan’s face. “I like being constantly unconscious as much as I like being imprisoned here. It can’t be good for your husband’s physical condition, either. If I show you my world, will you get your people to stop sedating me so much?” 

Jingyan hesitates. The Emissary stares back at him baldly.  

“Dr. Xia,” He says over the intercom. “Can you please get me the Pons headset?

Which is why, a few minutes later, Jingyan’s strapping on the headset to the Emissary’s head, wondering how bad of a decision he’s making. Dr. Xia and Dr. Jing are watching them from the other room, along with Marshall Lin and several armed guards.

“You know I can’t get to your mind with this equipment,” The Emissary remarks mildly. “I’ve tried countless times.” Jingyan snorts, doesn’t deign him with a response as he puts on his own headset.

 _Initiating neural handshake._ That familiar sharp pulse of energy, and he’s in.

 When Jingyan opens his eyes, it’s to a strange landscape full of glowing blue light. He blinks in confusion, disoriented. He’d on a tower overlooking a city. Lightning fills the darkened sky at regular intervals, making the atmosphere crackle with the scent of ozone, thunderclaps resounding every few seconds. The city below is a seething river of light. Intricately carved spires rise hundreds of stories into the sky, streams of magma cutting through black rock and flowing through channels, illuminating unfamiliar symbols. There are crowds. Jingyan can see them moving, walking and chittering and fighting, but whatever forms they have Jingyan’s mind can’t quite make sense of.

He leans against the railing, tries to breathe in deeply – to stave off a panic attack more than any need to breathe. The air is hot, hot enough to cook his lungs, but he inhales, exhales slowly. Trying to ignore the quiet presence beside him.

“Lieutenant Xiao,” It’s a voice but nothing close to human, a sharp trill that Jingyan knows he wouldn’t be able to understand in the waking world. From the edges of his vision he can see a towering creature, with too many appendages and phosphor-blue eyes. But when he turns it’s just the Emissary in his usual form, slender and dressed in his usual robes. His expression is serene but wary.

“No wonder you’re always so cold.”  Is the first thing Jingyan says, stupidly enough. A shadow of a smile flits across the Emissary’s  face. He holds out his hand, catches a glowing grain of something in his hand. At first Jingyan thinks it’s a firefly, but the Emissary dusts his hand and Jingyan realizes it’s only a bit of ash. He looks up, notices for the first time that the tower is carved into the slopes of a volcano. Its mouth is glowing golden and shrouded by toxic gas.

“For you. Not for us.” The Emissary places his hands on the railing. “This used to be a temple. It’s long gone now.” He lowers his arm. “So is the rest of this world.”

“You drained it, too?” Jingyan asks. The Emissary shakes his head.

“Not even the most technologically advanced of beings can hope to survive our sun’s death.” He points above them, and Jingyan sees an image of a long, sharp appendage, scaled with silver-grey, superimposed over his human arm. There is a dull red ball in the sky, that Jingyan had initially mistaken for a solar eclipse. Now he realizes it’s actually a red giant, far enough that it hasn’t swallowed the planet. “We were forced to abandon this planet a very long time ago.” The sharp pang of his longing surprises Jingyan. It’s the ache of a wound that can never heal.

“You miss it.” He says. The Emissary glances at him.

“It was our first home.” He says simply. “For others, our only home. I thought I’d forgotten what it looked like.” Jingyan snorts a little, mouth pressed into a bitter line.

“Home has always been people for me, not a place.” He says - then kicks himself for even saying it. The Emissary watches him. Somehow Jingyan can guess at what expression he would wear. It discomfits him.

 “I’m sorry.” He says. Jingyan’s hands curl into fists against the railing. Angrier at the sincerity in The Emissary’s words than he would have been had he been mocking.

“You’re not.” He says harshly. The Emissary simply looks at him.

“You know I’m telling the truth.” His fingers stroke at a carving along the wall. “Do I feel sorry for what we had to do? No. Your race would do the same. We’ve watched you for long enough to know you aren’t any less brutal than the worst of us.” He looks up. “But am I sorry for what you experienced on a personal level? Yes, I am. Jingyan, I am truly sorry.”

Silence. Jingyan does not look at the Emissary. Below, the city’s lights are extinguished one by one, the city going dark and empty.

“Jingyan,” Jingyan turns to face the Emissary, but freezes when he sees Xiao Shu. Xiao Shu, looking the way he used to, healthy and bright and so much love in his eyes.

Jingyan can’t speak, can’t move. He wants to scream, wants to grab Xiao Shu in his arms and never let go. But he does none of those things, and Xiao Shu takes him by the hand. His grin turns sad.

“Co-pilots, remember?”  He says. Jingyan looks at their joined hands. Their wedding rings gleam in the light of the dying sun.

“You’ll be all right, Jingyan.” Xiao Shu says softly. “I’ll make sure of it.”

“Xiao Shu-” but the world is already dissolving around him, unravelling. He tries to grab hold of Xiao Shu, but he fades like smoke in Jingyan’s arms, and then. He’s awake. The Emissary’s eyes are closed, the Pons headset off, and he’s being carried back to the bed under Dr. Jing’s watchful eye.

“He hasn’t been drugged, don’t worry.” She says when she sees Jingyan has resurfaced. “He fell unconscious after he removed the headset. Not because of a seizure – I think he’s just not used to being awake for so long.” Jingyan takes off his headset, goes to Xiao Shu. Dr. Jing’s expression is quietly expectant, but for now he doesn’t answer her. Just tucks the jacket around him, then takes Xiao Shu’s hand- the one where his ring used to be, fingers gone too thin and brittle for it now- presses it against his cheek.

 ---

Jingyan and Zhanying battle a Kaiju within a month of their piloting Foya. They’re lucky to be alive by the end of it. Once again Lin Shu watches helpless as his husband is almost killed, only this time he can’t do anything about it when Jingyan and Zhanying both lose control of Foya.

Timely intervention by the new recruits – Jianghu Brawler, piloted by Jingyan’s younger cousin and his best friend – save Foya as neural handshake is re-initiated. Between them they manage to rip the Kaiju apart without the coast being ravaged, but Foya suffers from some critical damage. Lin Shu sprints to the hangar after the fight’s done, throws himself into Jingyan’s shaking arms.

Afterwards, Lin Shu corners Zhanying and forces him to tell him what happened. Zhanying desperately tries to fend him off, but like everyone else confronted with Lin Shu’s relentless questioning he caves in.

“He was distracted,” Zhanying says. He looks unhappy, ashamed. “The Kaiju went for his side of the Jaeger, and all of a sudden he got pulled into the memory of his last ride. I tried to help him, but the connection snapped.” Lin Shu’s gripping the edge of his sleeve so tightly he’s surprised the fabric doesn’t give.

“Was he thinking about me?” Lin Shu asks. His voice is hard. Zhanying’s hesitation is answer enough.

He fucks Jingyan that night, fast and hard. Jingyan takes it, clinging to his shoulders and grunting with each thrust. Afterwards Jingyan holds him through the seizure. He falls asleep soon after, Lin Shu clinging to him almost to the point of bruising, unable to close his eyes. His ear pressed against Jingyan’s heart, reassuring himself it’s still beating.

He arrives in the labs late the next morning when he receives a notification that someone from K-Science wants to meet with him. Whatever half-hearted apology Lin Shu’s come up with dies on his tongue when he arrives in K-Science and sees what they were able to recover from yesterday’s fight.

A Kaiju’s secondary brain, suspended in a tank. Lin Shu stares, circles it slowly. The brain pulses sickly under the harsh lights of the lab. He recognizes a few scientists from K-Science gathered around it taking notes. Dr. Xia, and his adopted son – now assistant- Xia Chun. Not for the first time Lin Shu wonders where the hell Dr. Xia got his terrible naming skills. Xia Dong had it the worst, but at least there wasn’t a Xia Xia.

“How’d you manage to get it undamaged?” Lin Shu asks. Dr. Xia steps forward from the scans he’d been reading on his computer, mutters something to Xia Chun. 

“A stroke of luck.” Xia Chun answers. He’s smiling as he goes over to where Lin Shu’s standing. “The Kaiju was pregnant. Its offspring here massacred some of Xuanji’s people when they were harvesting parts. Lucky we were on the scene.”

“Lucky for us, you mean,” Lin Shu mutters. He thinks about what those workers’ last thoughts might have been, firmly stirs his thoughts away from the flashback waiting in the wings.

“Lucky for humanity, that we were able to obtain it.” Dr. Xia says. His eyes are flat and cold. Frankly, he’d always given Lin Shu the creeps. At one point, Dr. Xia and Dr. Jing had been working together, shortly after Lin Shu started training as a pilot. The partnership didn’t end well – some complaint about how Dr. Xia was using Dr. Jing’s research for his own project, that Dr. Jing disapproved of. Lin Shu never found out why, but PPDC couldn’t afford to fire Dr. Xia, so into the K-Science department he was reassigned.

“What are you guys planning to do with it?” Lin Shu asks. Fei Liu shifts beside him, uneasy. 

"Shu-gege," he mumbles. Lin Shu takes his hand, squeezes it, and he quiets down, staring at the Kaiju brain with wide eyes. 

“We won’t be dissecting it just yet.” Dr. Xia replies. “This is the only whole brain sample we’ve ever recovered before the Kaiju corpse started to decompose.” A pause. “I was hoping Jaegertech might also find it useful.”

“We’re into human neuroscience, not alien biology.” Lin Shu says. He taps on the glass, and one of the brain’s hanging appendage-tentacle-things thumps back against the glass. “You’re offering a partnership?” Dr. Xia’s eyes gleam.

“Dr Jing and I did not part on the best of terms.” He says. “I was hoping her protégé might be more amenable to my proposal. It would be a shame to let a workplace quarrel get in the way of saving humanity.”

“Considering the workplace quarrel involved a major breach of ethics,” Lin Shu says coolly. Dr. Xia’s face doesn’t even twitch. Lin Shu glances back at the brain in its tank. “I’ll talk to Dr. Jing. She’ll definitely want to study this, too.”

Xia Jiang bows. “I thank you for your cooperation.” He walks out of the lab with Xia Chun, the both of them talking in low voices.  Lin Shu finds himself lingering in K-Science for a few more minutes, staring at the tank, an idea niggling at the back of his mind. The idea stays with him even when he returns to Jaegertech.

\---

They are in a Jaeger, and they’re fighting for their lives.

 _“JINGYAN_ _!”_ Xiao Shu’s scream of pain and terror is raw in his mind. Jingyan takes a deep breath, fights to let the memory pass through him, to let it go. Zhanying is present, speaking aloud, his voice grounding him back to the present. Reminding him that they’re in a Jaeger. They’re in a Jaeger about to send a Kaiju back to hell.

Zhanying grunts as the Kaiju rams itself against Foya’s middle again, and he and Jingyan both reach for the Kaiju’s head, yanking it back until it stumbles away, roaring. A short distance away is the remains of Winter Colossus. Xia Dong had survived the Kaiju disabling Colossus’ reactor and crushing its Conn-pod. Her husband had not.

“Fucker, it’s like it knows how you’re fighting!” Lin Chen’s voice crackles through the intercom. “Foya, lead the Kaiju away from the coast and shoot it dead at sea! We’re sending in Jianghu Brawler in as backup!”

“Trying,” Jingyan grunts. He and Zhanying lunge for the Kaiju again, but the Kaiju evades them, lets out a furious hiss. It has neck frills standing on end like a gigantic lizard, and Foya braces itself as a wave of energy slams into them. The same wave of energy had taken out Winter Colossus, but thankfully Foya was an older model that didn’t rely on digital systems.

Foya grabs for the Kaiju again, and with their combined strength they haul it away, throw it as far as their metal arms can reach. The tsunami the impact of hitting the water causes almost has them buckling, but they manage to hold their ground. Taking out Foya’s signature bow and arrow and aiming it at the now thoroughly pissed Kaiju.

 _“Now, Jingyan_ _!”_ Xiao Shu’s voice rings through Jingyan’s memories. And then the explosion tears through their arms.

“ _Foya_ _!”_ Foya crashes to its knees as its arms rain fire and debris. Zhanying is screaming. His right arm a mass of gore and burned flesh, Jingyan’s little better. The arrow had exploded while they were aiming it.

“Foya! Answer me! What’s going on there?!” Lin Chen’s voice is distorted, the most panicked Jingyan has ever heard it. Through the pain Jingyan manages to speak.

“L’OCCENT,” he slurs. “L’OCCENT, we are down. I repeat, we are down.” Terror, churning in his gut. “We can’t move. All systems are down.” He can barely hear himself over Lin Chen’s cursing and the panicked screams he can hear from L’OCCENT. Foya and Winter Colossus had been the last Jaegers left.

“I need to talk to Xiao Shu,” Jingyan says. His vision is going dark. “He designed Foya. He knows how to fix him. Please-“

“He won’t be able to help you,” Xiao Shu’s voice. But not through the intercom, but ringing through Jingyan’s head. “He’s no longer here.” Jingyan presses the intercomm’s button so hard he almost breaks it.

“Xiao Shu, stop kidding around –“

“I’m not,” Xiao Shu’s voice, but so so distant. “I’m sorry, Jingyan.” And Jingyan hits the intercom again, wanting to scream _where are you what have you done_ but then he sees the trail of light. Winter Colossus, Jianghu Brawler – the others – they’re burning, all burning, Jingyan can hear Jingrui and Yujin’s shouts of panic and confusion. And there’s light, more light  falling  from the sky. And Jingyan feels a sick swoop of horror as he recognizes what they are. What they mean for the people living here.

Nukes.

The wave of energy devours him before he can even scream.

 Every cell of his ignites in agony. Every neuron lit up and he’s thrashing, tangled and suffocating in blankets. Arms holding him down -

“Jingyan!” That beloved voice. He’s in their bed in the bunker, shivering and sobbing. Xiao Shu is beside him, his hand on his back, rubbing slow circles along his spine. Real. Alive. Whole.

Jingyan turns, grabs at Xiao Shu. Clutches him tightly against his chest as he trembles.

“It’s just a memory,” Xiao SHu’s voice is soft and uncertain. “Jingyan, it’s just a memory. It’s all right,”  And Jingyan wants to laugh, to cry, to sob. Because nothing will be all right, ever again. But Xiao Shu is here. His Xiao Shu is here.

“I’m not-“ Xiao Shu falls silent when Jingyan touches his face. He looks so different. His face thinner, eyes sadder. But he’s still Xiao Shu. Still his Xiao Shu. And he’s about to say something else, but Jingyan shakes his head. Cradling his face between his hands and kissing him.

Xiao Shu is very still beneath him. Frozen, but Jingyan kisses him again and he opens up. Kisses back like he’s starving for it. Stroking the back of Jingyan’s neck until the trembling subsides. Holding him, and Jingyan has missed this. Presses his mouth against Xiao Shu’s forehead, his mouth, his cheeks. Stroking at the edge of his jawbone, and Xiao Shu buries his face against his neck, Jingyan cupping the back of his neck and holding him there. His eyelashes brushing softly against his skin as Jingyan drops a kiss against the top of his head, curling up around him.  Keeping him safe.

He can’t lose him again, he can’t.

“I’m so sorry.” Xiao Shu whispers, again and again. “Jingyan, I am so sorry.” His voice sounds raw, and in the Drift, Jingyan can feel his guilt. His shame. Bone-deep tenderness, the need to help make things right. And love. So much love, aching and desperate.

Jingyan kisses him again. It’s sweet, chaste. Xiao Shu shivers. His arms winding around his shoulders, bringing him closer. Jingyan tugging his shirt off, his trousers down, only partway off. Their lovemaking after a fight in the Jaeger is always raw, always frantic. Their way of reminding each other that they’re still alive, that the world is still here. Between them, around them.

“I forgive you.” Jingyan whispers. Xiao Shu’s eyes go wide, and he opens his mouth, but whatever he was about to reply with dies on his lips as Jingyan curves his hand around his jaw.

“I can forgive you anything. Just please. Please come back to me.” Xiao Shu’s eyes look liquid. Brown, flickering to phosphorescent blue. His lips are parted. Jingyan places his other hand on his face. Searching, searching, and he finds it.

He finds him.

Jingyan kisses him again. Xiao Shu moans. His expression so flayed open and raw that Jingyan leans down to kiss him again, brushing fingers against his cheek. His mouth burns. Xiao Shu reaches up, grasps at his waist where his sweater has hiked up. Hands slipping down the length of his back, nails digging into his flesh and raking down, making him gasp. The scratches will be raw come morning, will rub beneath his clothes. Xiao Shu’s way of telling the world he owns Jingyan, and Jingyan had always felt their light sting with pride. And then Xiao Shu pulls away. Touches the raised circuitry burns on Jingyan’s chest, down his arm.

Xiao Shu traces them for a long time. It’s a while before he lifts his eyes to Jingyan’s. Such a look in them and Jingyan presses a kiss against Xiao Shu’s temple to soothe him. _I’m still alive. I’m still with you._  His hands pushing up Xiao Shu’s shirt. His mouth finding his husband’s over and over again, until Xiao Shu is gasping beneath him, aching for him. His eyes bright, so bright, and Jingyan lets fall words from his lips. All his regrets, his apologies, everything he had never been able to tell Xiao Shu out loud before everything fell apart. With the Drift, they had never needed to say anything before, but Jingyan owes him this. Owes him all the words he was too stubborn to allow himself to say.

Xiao Shu doesn’t say anything, but he kisses Jingyan back just as desperately. Jingyan can feel how bruised Xiao Shu’s lips are, how his mouth aches. How much he needs this, he needs Jingyan. Needs him, loves him _I’m sorry I’m sorry I’m sorry._

“Come back to me,” Jingyan rasps. Xiao Shu’s crying. Silent, and there’s so much pain on his face that Jingyan just wants to scoop up and carry away. They’ve both been through enough.

“You don’t deserve this,” Xiao Shu’s lips don’t move, but Jingyan hears it anyway. The same words Xiao Shu had spoken the night Jingyan received the news he was being sent to Anchorage.  Jingyan hadn’t answered because the pain had been too raw, too deep, and he’d grown numb with how relentlessly it had beat against his ribs. Pretending to be asleep while his husband clung to him just for a moment before stumbling away. And Jingyan, more than anything Jingyan wishes he could reel back time. Rewind the seconds and reel Xiao Shu back to bed with him. Hold him and tell him that he was never going to stop Jingyan from loving him, despite all his best efforts. That Jingyan’s life was with him, beating at the same pace as his heart.

“He knew.” Xiao Shu whispers. “He’d always known. He loved you so much, Jingyan.  I am so _sorry.”_ Jingyan’s eyes are burning. Xiao Shu’s are reddened at the corners. He brushes his thumbs beneath them, and tears spill out, warm against his skin. Like sunlight on waves. Memory like a tide, pulling him back. But Jingyan doesn’t push Mei Chang Su away, doesn’t pull away himself.

Mei Chang Su is trembling. His breath coming in short and sharp, his slender shoulders shaking. His skin is cold, so cold, even as Jingyan gathers him into his arms.

“Please,” his voice cracks. “Please let my husband come home.” Mei Chang Su doesn’t answer, but it’s not like Jingyan was expecting one.

It’s a long time before Mei Chang Su’s shudders subside. A long time before he’s silent, still clinging to Jingyan. And Jingyan. Jingyan lets him. Let’s Mei Chang Su’s breath even out, skin pressed together.  Need twisted and human and despairing. Jingyan’s shaking fingers  trace the sharp curve of his cheek, and Mei Chang Su closes his eyes, buries his face against Jingyan’s chest. Palm pressed flat over his beating heart.

\--

Jingyan storms into Jaegertech the moment Marshall Lin gives him the news. Lin Shu had been expecting him, had cleared out the labs for this very confrontation. Fei Liu jumps to his feet when Jingyan bursts in, alarmed, but Lin Shu places a hand on his shoulder.

“It’s all right, Fei Liu.” Fei Liu is staring at Jingyan, bewildered. Jingyan’s expression is controlled- more for Fei Liu’s sake than Lin Shu’s – but Lin Shu knows Jingyan’s absolute _fury_ when he sees it.

“Fei Liu. Please go give this to Lin Chen,” Fei Liu doesn’t budge. He’s looking back and forth between Lin Shu and Jingyan, clutching the back of Lin Shu’s seat protectively. Lin Shu sighs, turns to him.

“Fei Liu,” He says, injects his voice with mild iron. Not enough to scare the boy, but enough for him to know he’s in deadly earnest. “Please. Go to Lin Chen.  I have to speak with Yan-gege alone.” Fei Liu reluctantly leaves. Jingyan waits until the pitter-patter of his steps have faded until he turns to Lin Shu again.

“Marshall Lin just reassigned me and Zhanying to Anchorage.” He says without preamble. His nostrils are flaring, his mouth set into a grim line. “How much do you know about it?” Lin Shu fiddles with the edge of his sleeve, forces himself to look Jingyan in the face.

“Marshall Lin’s capable of making his own judgment calls. Maybe he thought you were needed more there.” The lie flows easily and smoothly down his tongue. “They need Jaegers to protect the Wall while it’s under con-“

Jingyan slams his palm down onto XiaoShu’s desk, startling him. When they were kids they used to beat the shit out of each other whenever one or the other got to be too much, and Xiao Shu. Xiao Shu would welcome that. Would prefer that to the _hurt_ warring with rage on Jingyan’s face.

“Stop fucking _lying,_ Xiao Shu.” Jingyan snarls. He’s shaking, hands clenched into fists. Xiao Shu just stares back at him with as even and calm an expression as possible. Knowing it’ll get Jingyan angrier. Knowing it’ll hurt him worse, and he has to hurt Jingyan as much as he can for this to work.

“You convinced Marshall Lin didn’t you?” Jingyan’s hands are on his shoulders, and he gives him a harsh shake. “ _Didn’t you._ ” Lin Shu grabs Jingyan by the wrists, shoves him away. Jingyan lets him. His eyes are over-bright. Xiao Shu steels himself.

“He didn’t need much convincing.” Lin Shu says flatly. “You almost got yourself and your partner killed last time. Anchorage has fewer people. It’ll be easier to guard while you and  Captain Lie work your issues out, not to mention Winter Colossus is there if things get hairy.”

“If Otachi had attacked a day later,” He continues brutally.  “Jianghu Brawler would’ve already been deployed to Seoul, and we’d be all dead.” It’s a logical argument, one that he’s rehearsed countless times. In his head Jingyan hadn’t been happy, but he’d accepted the sense in Lin Shu’s proposal. Of course, that had been the height of wishful thinking.

“You’re planning something.” Jingyan says after a while. Lin Shu _doesn’t_ react. And it’s ridiculous, because they haven’t been in Drift for a year, but he carefully doesn’t think of the Kaiju brain in K-Science’s lab, and the Pons system he’s been building from scraps.

_“Are you sure this’ll work?” Dr. Xia sounded doubtful. Lin Shu just grinned at him, manic and just the slightest bit desperate._

_“What more have we got to lose?”_

 “There’s something you’re planning to do that you don’t want me to know about, and I want to know what it is.” Lin Shu snorts.

“Jingyan, let’s not bring our problems into our work-“ But Jingyan shakes his head. His expression is that mix of bull-headed mulishness and determination that Lin Shu both loved and dreaded. _You damn water buffalo, why can’t you just let things rest?_

“Xiao Shu,” – and Lin Shu snaps.

“I’m not planning anything I haven’t been actively doing for the past year and a half.” He snarls. Shoving at Jingyan when he tries to grab him by the shoulders again. Anger, true anger burning hot inside him.

“You don’t believe I’m just taking advantage of your fuck-up because I want you _gone_?” Lin Shu can see Jingyan fighting to control himself. Containing his temper, tip-toeing around him, treating him like the fragile thing he’d become, and he feels such a wave of disgusted rage that he doesn’t notice himself standing up, every limb trembling, glaring at Jingyan.

“I’m your husband!” Jingyan shouts.  “I’ve been putting myself through hell taking care of you for a year, putting up with you pushing me away and taking everything out on me, because I’m your fucking husband and _I love you_ _!_ Now you want me to _leave_ and you won’t even tell me why, you _selfish_ fucking _bastard_ - _”_

 _“You put me in here_ _!”_   Lin Shu screams. All the pent-up rage of the past year tearing out of him. The bottled-up resentment and pain. Jingyan flinches back like Lin Shu had slapped him, but Lin Shu can’t bring himself to care, can’t bring himself to stop. Everything pouring out of him like pus from a wound as he grabs the collar of Jingyan’s shirt. 

 “You’re the reason I’m like this, and you expect me to be _grateful_?” Lin Shu’s nails catch on Jingyan’s skin as he shoves Jingyan, hard enough that his lower back hits the edge of the adjacent desk. “Who fucking miscalculated and thought the fucking Kaiju was dead when it wasn’t? Who almost got torn out of the fucking Jaeger because of his goddamn mistake? _Who was the reason I had to pilot solo and damaged my goddamn brain so I could save the fucking city and ourselves?”_

 Jingyan looks like Lin Shu stabbed him in the chest. Looks the way he did when Lin Shu was stuck in the hospital bed, peeing and shitting himself seizure after seizure, unable to move and in so much pain that he wished he’d died taking down the Kaiju instead of surviving just to be like this for the rest of his life. It makes Lin Shu even angrier, because what right did he have what _right-_

He only realizes he’s been saying screaming It out loud when he sees the bloodless devastation on Jingyan’s face. Lin Shu forces himself to continue, every word like the lash of a whip, because Jingyan can’t be here when he begins his experiments, because Jingyan would try to stop him, because Lin Shu knows using the Pons system will probably kill him and this is their only chance. This is his only chance to be useful again, because they can’t afford to sacrifice anyone else.

And Jingyan. Jingyan has to get used to him being gone.

“I want you _gone,_ Jingyan.” Lin Shu spits out, and he almost means it. “ _Please,_ get out of my fucking _sight_ -“

Jingyan does. The door to the labs slam behind him. Lin Shu sinks to his knees, shivering, biting his palm bloody to muffle his sobs. The world distorts around the edges, and he falls sideways.

When he comes to, Fei Liu is there, holding his hand. Such a worried expression on his little face. Lin Shu tries to move, but can’t. His limbs are too heavy.

“Shu-gege,” Fei Liu says. And Lin Shu’s eyes are burning again.

“I’m sorry,” Lin Shu whispers to the little boy. “You don’t deserve this. Neither of you do.”

Fei Liu doesn’t answer. Just holds onto Lin Shu’s hand as Lin Shu cries.

\---

 

They do not speak about the kiss. Jingyan had expected Mei Chang Su to use it against him, something to deepen the rift of distrust between him and the rest of the PPDC, perhaps forcing Xia Jiang to eliminate him from the project altogether. But he never mentions it. Jingyan had disengaged from the Drift system, trembling all over as the PONS headset slipped from his grasp. Mei Chang Su hadn’t even reacted, but as Jingyan now knows, the blanker Mei Chang Su’s expression the more he was trying to hide. When Jingyan was interrogated, he just replied with the convenient half-truth – that he’d ended up chasing the R.A.B.I.T. and wandered into his memory of the Chiyan Incident.

Xia Jiang didn’t look convinced, but he never did. Dr. Jing’s expression remained impassive and calm, but Jingyan knows his mother’s powers of perception too well to know she’ll let it rest.

Jingyan hides out in the Fightroom afterwards, taking on Meng Zhi and Fei Liu as sparring partners.  He dodges Meng Zhi’s questions as deftly as he does his kendo staff, and though clearly deeply unhappy about it, Meng Zhi lets things rest. However, Fei Liu is another story.

“When can I see Su-gege again?” Fei Liu asks over their lunch of questionable stewed meat and rice. Jingyan barely contains his flinch, and Meng Zhi shoots him a helpless look.

“He’s been asking that everyday,”  MengZhi  explains apologetically. Jingyan wipes his mouth with a napkin, pushes his food over to Fei Liu, who for once in his existence ignores it. Just continues staring at Jingyan from over the rim of his bowl, his expression somehow both defiant and pleading.

There’s sauce and rice stuck at the corners of his lips. Fei Liu had always been a somewhat messy eater. Jingyan remembers Xiao Shu wiping crumbs away from Fei Liu’s mouth with the back of his hand.

And then he remembers the uncharacteristically gentle smile on Xiao Shu’s face and now.

Now he’s no longer sure.

“Is Su-gege all right?” Fei Liu asks. Jingyan takes a deep breath, but he’s spared from answering by an urgent notification from Dr. Jing.

As he excuses himself, he looks back. Fei Liu’s head has drooped to his chest, and Meng Zhi  is rubbing his back consolingly. Jingyan forces himself to walk away.

Dr. Jing is seated at her desk when Jingyan reaches her office. She’s holding a tablet. Jingyan tenses when he sees what’s on it – a video recording of Mei Chang Su in his cell.

“Did anything happen when I was gone?” Jingyan asks. He gets his answer in the slight hesitation as Dr. Jing answers.

“I’m not sure. If something did, Jingyan, you’re the only one who can tell me.” Dr. Jing hands Jingyan the tablet, presses the play button.

The first few seconds was nothing out of the ordinary. It just showed Mei Chang Su, sitting absolutely still. If it weren’t for the slight rise and fall of his breath and the timestamp marking the videos, Jingyan would think it was a static image, like the hours and hours of footage that they had before Xia Jiang came up with his one-way Drift system. But then Jingyan catches a flicker of movement. Mei Chang Su, lifting his hand up towards his lips. Then just as quickly lowering it onto his lap like he’d forgotten himself for just one moment.

Jingyan lets out an exhale. Dr. Jing watches him with serious, worried eyes.

“Jingyan.” Her voice remains gentle. “Is there anything you want to tell me about your last session?” A moment longer, and Jingyan does.

Dr. Jing’s expression doesn’t change. Jingyan, face flushing, doesn’t go into the details of the kiss. But he answers all of her questions about what he felt. Who he felt.

“You’re sure it was Xiao Shu? That it wasn’t the Emissary turning the Drift against you?” Jingyan gives a jerky nod.

“Yes. It was him.” He flounders. “But also… not.” Dr. Jing doesn’t speak, just patiently waits for him to explain.   

“It was Xiao Shu, but it wasn’t _just_ Xiao Shu, feeling all that. It was _him_ too.” Jingyan closes his eyes. The memory of that bed is still too real, even behind his shut eyelids. “Mei Chang Su was apologizing. For everything. I couldn’t tell them apart.” 

“I don’t think he could, either.” Jingyan opens his eyes. Dr. Jing’s expression hasn’t changed. But there’s a glint there that’s just as quickly hidden away by her usual calm, almost too fast for Jingyan to catch.

“You called him by his name.”  Dr. Jing says. “You’ve never done that before.” Jingyan blinks.

“Oh.”  Before Jingyan can react, Dr. Jing is already moving. Taking the tablet and  shutting the video. Her expression is contemplative.

“… Mom?”

“I don’t think it’s wise to use the Pons system anymore.” Dr. Jing says. “Marshall Lin didn’t want me to tell you, but Xiao Shu had a massive seizure soon after your session ended.” She raises a hand at Jingyan’s alarm. “We thought he was having a stroke. He hasn’t had another one, but just in case, we need to look into alternative ways to get the Emissary to talk.”

“… General Meng told me Fei Liu was asking to see him.” Jingyan says reluctantly. Hating himself for even suggesting it.  “Fei Liu misses him.“ Dr. Jing’s expression remains carefully neutral.

“You should bring him with you, next time. I promise I can get Dr. Xia to give him a clearance.” Jingyan wants to protest but he knows full well when his mother is giving a veiled order.

That afternoon, Fei Liu is practically skipping alongside him when he re-enters the prison. He carefully avoids Xia Dong’s frown when she sees them, and Fei Liu barely manages to wait for the door to be unlocked before he’s dashing in.

“Hello, Fei Liu,” Mei Chang Su looks and sounds exhausted. But now Jingyan knows what to look for, he notices the tension that floods out of Mei Chang Su’s shoulders at Fei Liu’s presence. The protective way he cradles the back of Fei Liu’s head as the boy hugs him. 

“I’m sorry I wasn’t able to pick flowers.” Fei Liu says. “Yan-gege didn’t tell me I could visit until now.” 

“That’s all right.” Mei Chang Su replies. His expression is carefully blank as he watches Jingyan. “Sit beside me, Fei Liu. Tell me about your day. Why did Yan-gege tell you to come visit just now?”

Fei Liu opens his mouth, but a sharp shake of Jingyan’s head has Fei Liu shutting it again. Fei Liu makes an unhappy noise, looking torn. But Jingyan answers for him.

“Because I didn’t think it would be safe,” He says. Mei Chang Su’s eyes narrow, but at the small noise Fei Liu makes Jingyan sees the motes of softness when the Emissary looks at the little boy.

“So you think differently now?” Mei Chang Su says. His voice is quiet and calm. So is Jingyan’s when he replies.

“Yes.” Jingyan says. “Now I do.” If he didn’t before, now confirmed it. Mei Chang Su’s barely perceptible anger by itself spoke volumes. As did the arm he wraps around Fei Liu’s shoulders.

 Jingyan turns to Fei Liu.

“Starting today, you can visit your Su-gege for two hours every afternoon. Would you like that?”

Pure delight suffuses Fei Liu’s face, and he nods eagerly. Mei Chang Su’s expression remains impenetrable, but Jingyan doesn’t miss how Mei Chang Su’s hand closes reflexively –protectively – around Fei Liu’s nape.

 

Jingyan leaves for Anchorage early the next day. Lin Shu doesn’t tell him goodbye, just stays in the garden all night after watching his husband sleep for possibly the last time. When he wakes up from a shallow doze it’s to Fei Liu prodding him awake on the forehead.

“Yan-gege’s left.” He says. Lin Shu slowly pushes himself up by the elbows.

“Oh.” He says. Tries to feel something, anything. Can’t.

“He told me ‘Tell Shu-gege ‘I love you,’ and ‘Goodbye.’” Fei Liu says. Lin Shu tries to smile at him.

“Anything else?” Fei Liu nods.

“’I love you.’ For me.” Lin SHu lets out a breath. It catches in his throat.

“Yan-gege loves you too, Fei Liu.” Lin Shu says. “Remember that, okay?” The little boy just shrugs. Lin Shu wants nothing more than to sweep him into his arms, but he stops himself. It was a mistake to have taken him in, to have made this child love him. What Lin Shu intends to do may leave Fei Liu broken worse than  he had left Jingyan.

But it’s too late to back out now.

“Shu-gege feeling bad?” Fei Liu looks worried. Lin Shu forces a smile onto his face, shakes his head.

“I’m all right,” he lies. Fei Liu doesn’t look like he believes him, but he carefully takes Lin Shu by the arm anyway, supporting him as they make their way back to the bunker.

Lin Shu transfers to K-Science that same day. Dr. Jing manages to corner him despite his best efforts. Lin Shu expects her to yell at him, maybe even slap him for what he told Jingyan. Dr. Jing just stands quietly beside him at the garden. Watching him watch Fei Liu happily chasing a white butterfly among the flowerbeds.

“Many people love you, Lin Shu, despite your best efforts to drive them away.” She turns to face him. Lin Shu can’t look her in the eye. He’d already removed his wedding ring. “They will always care.”

“I know, Auntie Jing.” He says. Auntie Jing just watches him with the same intensity that Lin SHu’s gotten used to from Jingyan.  “I just need space right now. So does Jingyan, deny it all he wants. We’re both tired.”

“Yes,” Dr. Jing agrees, to Lin Shu’s surprise. “I suppose you do,” He tries not to feel so relieved when Dr. Jing finally looks away.

“Jingyan arrived in Anchorage two hours ago.” Dr. Jing finally says. Lin Shu starts, glances at his phone and catches himself before he can ask _why hasn’t he called._ “I’ll keep you updated on his whereabouts, just as I’ll keep an eye on your health for him. No, don’t try to tell me I can;t.” She says, raising her hand. “I’m doing this because Jingyan loves you no matter how much you push him away, and you love him just as much though you seem to be doing your utmost to break your own heart.”

Lin Shu’s throat aches. “All right, Auntie.” Is all he says. Mercifully, she lets him go.

The project takes form. Lin Shu manages to design a Pons system from scratch, smuggling extraneous materials from Jaegertech and tweaking them, adding his own refinements. K-Science supplies him with information about Kaiju biology and everything else he can’t course through official channels. Marshall Lin observes, and Lin Shu always gets the feeling his father wants to tell him something important, something beyond the soldier and general they had become through the years. But he never says it out loud, and so Lin Shu keeps his silence.

(Every now and then, Lin Shu’s phone rings. He never answers it, no matter how much Jingyan is always a constant in his thoughts.)

\----

Jingyan keeps taking Fei Liu on his daily visits. Every day the boy hugs Mei Chang Su in greeting and sits as close as possible to him while nattering about what he’s allowed to say about his day. Everyday Mei Chang Su listens, quiet and gentle. But when Fei Liu tugs at a lock of his now too-long hair and searches his face for… something Jingyan can’t understand, Mei Chang Su smiles. Fei Liu settles back in his arms, content.

Jingyan doesn’t miss the soft kiss Mei Chang Su presses against the top of Fei Liu’s head, but he’s pretty sure Mei Chang Su wasn’t even aware he did it. It was just. Instinct. The need to care for and protect that Jingyan isn’t sure belongs to who. Mei Chang Su holding the little boy close like Fei Liu is his whole world and Jingyan knows painfully that the opposite is just as true.

This continues for three weeks. They leave off the One-way Drift during the whole time. The seizures reduce in number accordingly. One time Jingyan and Fei Liu walk into find Mei Chang Su convulsing on his bed. Fei Liu holds on tight to one hand while Jingyan keeps Mei Chang Su from choking on spit. Brushing the hair back and away from his forehead like he used to do for Xiao Shu when he let him.  

“What are you playing at?” Mei Chang Su’s voice is weak from exhaustion after a particularly brutal seizure, but it remains arctic. Jingyan just watches him from his seat by his bedside. Fei Liu is curled up, dozing, by Mei Chang Su’s feet.

 “What does it look like?” Jingyan asks quietly. Mei Chang Su _glares_ at him. Jingyan hadn’t thought him capable of something as messily, horribly _human_ as anger–

Then again, he’d thought Mei Chang Su incapable of a lot of things. He’d been wrong on almost all counts. The glare is gone as soon Jingyan sees it. In its place is the mask, shuttered closed. But now Jingyan knows what to look for, where to look.

What to use.

“Just rest, Chang Su.” Jingyan says quietly. Mei Chang Su’s eyes flash, but exhaustion claims him before he can retort. He slips into sleep with Jingyan watching over him. 

Naturally, word of his little experiment reaches the higher-ups. Marshall Lin orders Jingyan into his office and spends a good twenty minutes interrogating him as harshly and brutally as possible about what the _hell_ he’s doing, which Jingyan answers as politely and bluntly as possible.

“With all due respect, Sir. Nothing else has worked.” Jingyan says, when Marshall Lin cycles back for what must be the tenth time on how _Xiao Shu wouldn’t want this to happen._  “Xiao Shu’s always been better at coming up with stratagems. For his sake, I have to try.” Marshall Lin had run a hand down his face.

“How sure are you that this won’t blow up in your face and take Fei Liu with it?” Marshall Lin asks wearily. Truthfully, Jingyan has no idea. But there is one thing he’s sure of.

“He won’t hurt Fei Liu,” Jingyan says. Marshall Lin stares at him.

“He won’t.” Jingyan repeats. He smiles faintly. “That’s the one thing I know he won’t be capable of.”

“The Kaiju have slaughtered thousands of children, directly and indirectly- at their Masters’ behest.” Marshall Lin snaps. “What makes you think Fei Liu’s case is any different?”

Jingyan hesitates. He doesn’t know if he should get Marshall Lin’s hopes up, doesn’t know if this will work. But he has to try.

“Because Xiao Shu will not let him.” He says, putting as much conviction in the words as possible.  Marshall Lin stares at him. Jingyan forces himself to continue speaking.

“I’ve seen what’s in his mind. I know him practically better than anyone else on this planet. I know what he wants, better than he does.”  Jingyan stops. Marshall Lin’s expression is as still as carven stone.

“Mei Chang Su won’t hurt Fei Liu because most of the time, he can barely distinguish between himself and Xiao Shu.”  

Marshall Lin is silent. For a moment lost in thought. But then he pulls himself together.

“For all our sakes, I hope you’re right, Jingyan.”

“I know I am.” Jingyan says. And pretty soon came the time to prove it.

The alarm rings out when Jingyan is discussing matters with Dr. Jing. The piercing wail of it makes him feel sick.

“Winter Colossus is still under repairs.” Jingyan says. “Iron General will have to be deployed.” He quickly runs out of his mother’s office to the hangar.

Fei Liu and Meng Zhi are already suited up. Fei Liu looks as close to excited as his permanently serious expression shows. Meng Zhi grins when he sees Jingyan, but there’s the edge of trepidation there.

“Two Category 4s, Jingyan. The kid here’s excited.” Fei Liu makes a face when Meng Zhi ruffles his hair. Anxiety twists in Jingyan’s gut.

“Good luck.” He says. “Yunnan Pride will be riding with you?”

“Yup. She has to hang back though, can’t risk her getting wrecked. Lucky we got a few upgrades.” A member of the crew barks out an order. “We gotta go, Fei Liu.” But the boy hesitates. He’s holding a bunch of flowers, and his expression is uncertain.

“Give them to me,” Jingyan says. “I’ll make sure he gets them.” Fei Liu nods, presses the flowers into Jingyan’s hands. Orchids again. Then to his surprise, Fei Liu hugs him.

“I’m sorry,” Fei Liu mumbles. Jingyan lays a gentle hand on top of his head.

“I love you very much.” Jingyan says. “So do Xiao Shu and your Su-gege.” Meng  Zhi is staring at him, questioning, but there will be time for answers later.  “Now hurry. Win and come home.” Fei Liu grins. The crew member shouts again, and Fei Liu’’s darting up like a small cat to the cockpit.  

He heads straight for the prison, his blood pounding. Mei Chang Su is standing up, shaking so hard that Jingyan thinks he’s having a seizure. He braces Mei Chang Su by the arms, and the latter folds against him.

“Chang Su!” Jingyan catches him. Mei Chang Su’s touch, when he cups Jingyan’s face between his hands, is freezing.

“Tell Lin Chen that Fei Liu can’t ride.” Mei Chang Su says, hoarse with urgency. Jingyan freezes.

“How do you know they’re the ones being deployed?” Mei Chang Su shakes his head. He looks like he’s about to vomit.

“Chang Su,” Jingyan says. He cups Mei Chang Su’s chin, tilts it up towards his. “Answer me. Who told you Iron General would ride?” Mei Chang Su glances behind him,.

“I did.” Jingyan stiffens when he hears Dr. Xia’s cool, clipped tones. “You have your experiment, I have mine.” Ice drops down Jingyan’s spine.

“Xia Jiang.” Jingyan snarls, turning, not bothering with honorifics. This man doesn’t deserve respect, barely deserves to live. “What did you do?”

“An experiment, like I said.” Xia Jiang says evenly. “If it’s true that the Emissary has grown to love the boy, surely he’ll do something to keep him alive.” His eyes flash. “Weren’t you also using the child to awaken your husband?”

The sick swoop of guilt settles low in Jingyan’s gut. He’s about to get up and grab Xia Jiang by the collar, demand to find out what he’s done, but nails sink into his wrist from how tightly Mei Chang Su is gripping him. Pure instinct has Jingyan covering the back of his hand with his palm.

“Calm down.” Jingyan says, very gently. “Fei Liu has fought before. He’ll be fine.” But Mei Chang Su’s shaking his head.

“ _No.”_ It’s hissed between his teeth. “This is different. This-“  He winces, doubles over. Jingyan catches him, leads him to the bed. Mei Chang Su sinks into it, keeping his head between his knees.

 _They’re going to hurt him._ Jingyan hears the voice in his head, almost jerks back in shock, but Mei Chang Su clings to the front of his shirt. _They have specific orders to kill him, Jingyan, Mei Chang Su can’t help, please-_  

 _“_ Xiao Shu?” Xiao Shu’s eyes are so clear. So clear and so terrified.

“They know Iron General’s weaknesses.”  Mei Chang Su- _Xiao Shu-_ says. And Jingyan with sickening clarity realizes what Xiao Shu is trying to say.  

He whirls on Dr. Xia. _“You gave the Precursors information about Iron General?”_ Xia Jiang’s eyes gleam.

“Not directly, no. I did however manage to bribe an engineer to add some… updates to General Meng’s Jaeger.”  He turns to Mei Chang Su, who’s swaying, gripping Jingyan’s wrist so tight he’s leaving bruises. “You ought to be familiar with those plans. Weren’t you the one who coded the Jaegers to self-destruct in the middle of a Kaiju attack?”

“You _fucking-“_ Xia Jiang interrupts.

“It’s a matter of dying sooner rather than later. There’s no point in hanging onto the Jaegers if we’re just waiting for the world to be overrun. There’s no point letting children live, either.”  Xia Jiang replies. He’s speaking to Mei Chang Su. “If I have to force your hand to get what we need from you, so be it.”

He’s interrupted by the alarm wailing through the prison, and then Lin Chen’s voice crackles through the speakers.

“Iron General is down.”

\--

Lin Shu works on his project tirelessly. The Kaiju attack once more, targeting Tokyo. Yujin and Jingrui  dispatches it before it can reach the coast. Jianghu Brawler’s design holds up despite the Kaiju’s incessant battering, and Lin Shu sighs in relief when Yujin and Jingrui emerge unharmed. He never wants them to experience what he and Jingyan did. He never wants any pilot, and other person to get hurt again.

Finally the time comes to test it. Lin Shu hefts the helmet in his hands. The Kaiju brain pulses sickly in its tank. Lin Shu leans over to speak to the mic, swallowing to soothe the dry nervousness in his throat.

“First human-Kaiju drift experiment.” He speaks. He’s alone in the labs. Dr. Xia is in a meeting with Dr. jing and Marshall Lin and Fei Liu is already training as a Jaeger pilot. If this ends disastrously, at least the people who loved him didn’t have to watch him die.

“I have no idea what the outcome will be. I don’t know if I can survive this. My epilepsy has improved, but the surge from the Drift might be too much.” He pauses again. Thinks of his phone, ringing earlier that morning. Of Fei Liu, smiling at him as he gives him the year’s first plum blossoms and telling him Yan-gege had asked about him, again. Thinks of his father. Thinks of his husband, very far away.

“I love you,” Lin SHu says. “All of you. Jingyan, I’m sorry.” He waits a few more moments, but no more words come. He’s said everything he has to say. He switches on the Pons system, waits for it to initialize. Closes his eyes and puts the helmet on.

It’s beyond too late when he senses the thing waiting for him in the dark.  His last conscious thought is how angry Jingyan will be, how broken it’ll leave him, when he finds out what he’s done.

\--

By some miracle, Yunnan Pride and the half-repaired Winter Colossus manage to take down the two Kaiju by themselves. Afterwards,  rescue workers pull the charred, mangled remains of Iron General out of the Bay, Meng Zhi’s equally mangled body was still attached to the Conn-Pod’s harness. Fei Liu they find in a safety pod, half-crushed under debris. Meng Zhi must have ejected him just in time, before the Kaiju tore into their Jaeger.

Jingyan doesn’t see Meng Zhi’s body, something he’s sickeningly grateful for. He paces outside the operating room in the hours it takes to treat Fei Liu, refusing to sit despite his mother’s quiet entreaties.. When Dr. Yan comes out in blood-spattered scrubs and pure, painful relief in his expression, Jingyan almost sinks to the floor in relief. 

“I want to see him,” Mei Chang Su says,the first thing he tells Jingyan upon his return. “Please.” And Jingyan _almost_ hits him, right then and there, because of how he fucking _dared –_

And then he sees the blank desperation in Mei Chang Su’s face. The way he’s gripping the sleeve of his uniform so hard his fingertips had turned white. His shallow breathing.

(“He hasn’t slept in two days,” Dr. Jing had informed him quietly upon his arrival at the prison. “He’s had five seizures since your last visit. He hasn’t stopped asking if Fei Liu’s all right.”)

Which is how Jingyan finds himself marching Mei Chang Su down the corridors of the infirmary, his hands cuffed and half a dozen guns trained at his head. Dr. Yan looks flabbergasted when he sees their little entourage.

“What do you think this is, the medbay or the mess hall?” He spits out in indignation, but then he sees Mei Chang Su and falls silent.

Mei Chang Su is silent, too, as Jingyan leads him to the intensive care unit. To the room where Fei Liu is lying, battered and broken. His neck in a cast and his whole face bruised, his whole upper torso covered in circuitry burns from where his drivesuit had short-circuited. The same circuitry burns on Jingyan’s body.

Mei Chang Su immediately tries to head inside, his face chalk-white but Jingyan stops him. Nodding at Nurse Ji, who leads them to the scrubbing station where they could get themselves disinfected, to change into hospital scrubs and wear face masks to minimize vectors of infection. Jingyan takes note of how badly Mei Chang Su’s hands are shaking as he gets dressed, keeping a close eye for any tell-tale signs of a seizure.

Fei Liu is awake when they return. His eyes open into narrow slits that brighten when he sees Mei Chang Su. He tries to lift his hands, but stops, wincing.

Fei Liu frowns, gives a soft whimper. Mei Chang Su immediately reaches up, smoothes the little furrow on his forehead with his thumb.

“Don’t move.” He says. “You’ve been hurt, and you need to rest.” Fei Liu whimpers again, but he quiets down at Mei Chang Su carefully carding his fingers through his bangs. His eyes slipping shut. Jingyan watches Mei Chang Su’s shoulders sag in relief, but there’s no bitterness, no resentment. Just a hopeless, aching exhaustion, as Jingyan after almost half an hour slowly walks forward, places his hand on Mei Chang Su’s shoulder.

Mei Chang Su had his back turned to Jingyan like he’d practically forgotten about him.  And judging by how he tenses when Jingyan finally speaks, he had.

“You love him so much.” Jingyan says slowly. Mei Chang Su is silent.  Fei Liu twitches in his shallow sleep, but does not wake.

“Don’t you see they’re not the only children that you and your kind have hurt?” Jingyan’s voice shakes. Xiao Shu’s shoulders are bony under his hands. Mei Chang Su refuses to meet his eyes, so Jingyan cups his jaw in his hand, forces his face up.

“If you win, they will die.“ Jingyan emphasizes with a harsh shake.  A muscle in Xiao Shu’s jaw jumps, and the anger is such a familiar expression on his husband’s stolen skin that Jingyan’s heart aches. “The Kaiju will crush them, or devour them, or they’ll be hunted down, every single one. And even if you let them live, what kind of life will they have with our world enslaved and hollowed out?”

Mei Chang Su’s eyes flash. “You speak as if humans weren’t already on their way there before we ever re-entered your world.” He says coldly. But there’s a slight waver in his voice. A measure of doubt, the first Jingyan’s heard in the months he’s been given to raid Mei Chang Su’s impossible mind.

“Su-gege,” A light, frail voice whispers from the bed. Mei Chang Su immediately pulls away from Jingyan’s grip, his hands flitting down over Fei Liu’s face. Fei Liu’s eyes are bleary from the sedatives, and he reaches up, gives the oxygen mask a feeble yank. Mei Chang Su shakes his head, gently tugs his hand away, covers it with his.

“Don’t pull it off, you need it to breathe.” Mei Chang Su’s voice is very, very soft. Fei Liu frowns, then his body sags against his bed as Mei Chang Su strokes his hair.

“Hurts.” Fei Liu whispers. Mei Chang Su’s face is turned away so Jingyan can’t see his expression, but when Fei Liu tries to sit, he shakes his head. Gently squeezing his shoulder and making him lie back down.

“You can’t sit, xiao-Fei. You need to rest.” Fei Liu shakes his head. His face, Jingyan just now notices, is wet.

“Uncle Meng,” He whimpers. “Gone.” Mei Chang Su freezes.

Something in Jingyan twists and breaks. Fei Liu had still been connected to Meng Zhi when he died.

Mei Chang Su doesn’t move. Fei Liu lets out another whimper, starts to thrash.

 “ _Gone_ ,” Fei Liu cries again. His heart monitor is spiking, and Jingyan’s just pressed the call button for the nurse and the doctor when Fei Liu reaches out for Mei Chang Su with shaking arms.

His face is wet. He’s sobbing, crying like he’s five instead of fifteen. In many ways he still is, and in the bewilderment of his grief the fearless jaeger pilot is gone. Once again, he’s the little boy Jingyan and Lin Shu found in the wreckage of Tokyo, so many years ago.

“Su-gege.” Fei Liu whimpers again. And Jingyan can’t take it anymore, presses on his communicator to contact Dr. Jing, when Mei Chang Su moves. Leaning forward and gathering the boy close to him, mindful of the tubes and electrodes still attached to his torso his arms –everywhere while Fei Liu cries and cries and cries.

Mei Chang Su doesn’t tell him to stop. Doesn’t say anything, really. Just holds Fei Liu, a hand cradling the back of his head as Fei Liu empties himself of his grief. Fei Liu with his head buried in the crook of Mei Chang Su’s shoulder, hiding there as if it’s the last safe place in the world. Jingyan swallows, takes a step forward. Sits on the edge of the bed, and Fei Liu’s too injured to have another arm wrap around him, but Jingyan gently takes his hand in his.

Dr. Jing arrives to find them like that. Fei Liu with his eyes red and puffy but dry, having sobbed himself out. The neck of Mei Chang Su’s shirt is soaked, and Fei Liu has his face pressed against the damp patch while clinging to Jingyan’s hand. He lets out a cry of protest when Mei Chang Su pulls away, but quiets down when Mei Chang Su strokes his forehead. Silent as Dr. Jing checks on Fei Liu’s vitals, upping his dose of painkillers when she sees him wince.

“He needs to sleep now.” Dr. Jing says. “So do the both of you. I’ll be his watcher.” She’s speaking to Jingyan but she’s watching Mei Chang Su, who keeps his expression carefully blank.

“It’s all right, Mom. We’ll stay here.” Jingyan says. Dr. Jing’s gaze flickers to his. “I need to help Fei Liu when he wakes.” When he wakes up and has screaming nightmares. Mei Chang Su doesn’t react, doesn’t even blink. But his fingers don’t stop their gentle, careful strokes down Fei Liu’s forehead. Jingyan’s still holding onto his adopted son’s hand.

“All right.” Dr. Jing says. She glances at Mei Chang Su again. By her expression, they’re in for another long overdue talk, and Jingyan stifles a sigh.

Dr. Jing leaves after several more minutes of adjusting Fei Liu’s equipment. Jingyan’s not sure Mei Chang Su noticed her leave. His expression is blank. And Jingyan has seen every myriad shade of emotion possible on Xiao Shu’s face, every mask worn by Mei Chang Su. And he has never seen the latter look more lost.

“Chang Su,” Jingyan starts, stops. After a short eternity, Mei Chang Su looks up. His eyes flicker as Jingyan traces the pad of his thumb beneath the corner of his eye without thinking. The tip comes away wet, and Mei Chang Su blinks, lifts a hand to his face. Brushing his palm against his cheek, staring at the saltwater smeared against his palm as it evaporates, but the streams trailing down the corners of his eyes do not stop.

 

There is a blizzard. Mei Chang Su is sitting in the heart of it, the wind whipping around him fiercely enough that it flays his skin. He’s cold, colder than he’s ever been in the millennia of his existence, but for some reason the wet smear of tears on his palm does not freeze.

He stares at it, cradling one palm on top of another. He’s staring so intently that he almost doesn’t notice the human standing in front of him until he takes off his helmet.

The face Mei Chang Su sees in a mirror stares back at him, bloodied. His helmet is cracked, and half his armor has melted into the skin. Mei Chang Su feels the scars on his physical body give a twinge.

Phantom pain, he remembers. Or was it Lin Shu? Phantom pain. The agony of feeling something that should no longer have been there. Humans were the strangest, most fragile things.

“Shouldn’t it be ‘something that should never have been there’ for you?” The man – boy, really - says. Mei Chang Su closes his palm.

“Lt. Lin.” Mei Chang Su greets. Lin Shu grins. It’s a terrible, nightmare thing. Full of blood and so very broken.

“I expected you to be bigger.” Lin Shu remarks, and Mei Chang Su realizes with faint surprise that he’s no longer in the human form he uses to interact with Jingyan in Lin Shu’s mind. The colors all look right again, and he can breathe.

But the smear of Fei Liu’s tears on his hand is still wet.   He should tower over Lin Shu – at twelve feet, he was easily twice as tall as the human boy. But Lin Shu calmly looks him in the eye. No fear at all, or wonder.

Mei Chang Su can hear a heart, a human heart beating. Is it Lin Shu’s or his own? He can’t tell anymore.

“It’s mine.” Lin Shu’s voice sounds like it’s coming from everywhere, and inside him, all at once. “And yours. Jingyan’s, Fei Liu’s. Everyone I love, and everyone you love too, by extension.”  Lin Shu sits cross-legged in front of him. Mei Chang Su looks up from his damp palm, to Lin Shu’s face.

It surprises him, that there’s no hate there. No anger, even. Just a calm serenity of someone who knows victory is unavoidable.

“You planned this all along, didn’t you?” Mei Chang Su asks slowly. Lin Shu drops his gaze down to Mei Chang Su’s hands, and Mei Chang Su belatedly realizes he’d been rubbing the edge of his sleeve with his fingers. He’s not certain what he’s accusing Lin Shu of, exactly. Only that he knows he’s as much responsible for it as Mei Chang Su’s own traitorous heart.

“Not really.” Lin Shu says frankly. “I just know how to make the most of things. You kept me locked away for the longest time. By the time I managed to wake up, you were so distracted that you never noticed me in the background. “ Lin Shu props a knee up. “I don’t blame you. My husband’s really fucking hot.” A smirk. Mei Chang Su watches him quietly.

“I hung back so I could watch without anyone noticing. It was a gamble.” Lin Shu says. “I’m surprised you didn’t see it coming, you did almost the exact same thing to me.” He shrugs. “But your feelings for Fei Liu, though. For Jingyan. That’s all you.”

Silence. The wind howls around them. It’s so cold. Mei Chang Su wants to get out of this freezing world and return to the heat of his own. He wants a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, a cup of hot tea in his hands. He wants Jingyan to hold him, to smile at him the way he does only for his husband, wants Fei Liu to lay his head against his knee, trusting and whole again, unmarked by loss. 

(“Su-gege,” the boy had called him from the very start. The Emissary had taken on a human name, and he had no idea what it would entail. What it would cost him.)

Mei Chang Su wants, so much that he aches with it. And so does Lin Shu.

“What do you plan to do now?” Mei Chang Su asks. He doesn’t expect an answer, but to his surprise. Lin Shu shrugs again.

“My mind is in pieces.” Lin Shu says frankly. “I’m not strong enough to overpower you or lock you away, and when you leave I’m pretty sure I’ll end up a vegetable.” His eyes narrow, his expression going sharp and cold.  

“But that’s assuming you can bear to let Jingyan die. If you can stand to watch Fei Liu be slaughtered. I don’t think you can, not anymore.” Pain lances through Mei Chang Su’s at the very thought, at the very possibility- He’s so lost that he doesn’t notice Lin Shu stepping closer until he does.

“You love my family as much as I do.” Lin Shu whispers. “Please help me protect them.” His dark eyes are full of desperation, so much that Mei Chang Su is drowning, gasping for breath, struggling up and trying to breathe-

“Chang Su,” Mei Chang Su calms, closes his eyes as warmth surrounds him, gathers him up. Memories that aren’t his, and some that were, swirling and eddying around him like an ocean of molten rock.

“Su-gege?” A paper-thin whisper. Mei Chang Su’s fingers stroke at the small hands clutching his, soothing him. This precious child that he almost lost.

“Chang Su, you need to go now.” He looks up with bleary, exhausted eyes. At the hand on his shoulder, warm and so comforting, then at the armed men surrounding them. Guards.

Oh.

“He needs me.” He says. ”Fei Liu. He’ll get scared if I’m not here.” Mutterings. Mei Chang Su feels Jingyan squeeze his shoulder, then say something to the armed men. To his faint surprise, they leave. Only one woman hangs back, frowning. Mei Chang Su can’t remember her name, but the dull pang in his chest tells him she used to matter, and he’d hurt her terribly.

“Stay, then.” Jingyan whispers. “Not here. You need to lie down.” He tries to pull Mei Chang Su to his feet, to lead him to the couch beside Fei Liu’s hospital bed,  but Mei Chang Su shakes his head. Fei Liu had cushioned his head after a fall one too many times, had stayed up while he shuddered and thrashed, had cared for him despite knowing what he was. The least he can do is to hold his child’s hand while he slept so he wouldn’t get scared.

“I can’t leave him,” He says again. Jingyan squeezes his shoulder. 

“You won’t have to,” His husband replies. “You won’t ever have to.”  Mei Chang Su feels his eyes stinging, but the only words that bubble up are words that he should have said, almost two years ago.

With his other hand he catches Jingyan  by the wrist. Jingyan stiffens with surprise, but he doesn’t let go.

“Stay.” He whispers. “Please, stay. I’m sorry for everything I said.”   _I need you so much._

Silence. Mei Chang Su’s grip loosens, but before it can fall all the way away, Jingyan suddenly wraps him in his arms. A little awkward as he takes care not to jostle Fei Liu’s hand in Mei Chang Su’s. He’s shaking, almost as badly as Mei Chang Su. His cheeks pressed against his are wet.

“Don’t leave me alone,” Mei Chang Su hears himself whisper, over and over. “ _Please._ Don’t leave me alone.” Warmth, on his forehead. A kiss. Jingyan stroking the back of his neck, and Mei Chang Su melts against him.

“I won’t.” Jingyan whispers. “I’m here. I won’t ever leave you ever again.” 

 

 

Mei Chang Su is asleep on a cot beside Fei Liu’s bed when Jingyan finally leaves. The cot is a bit lower than Fei Liu’s bed, so Jingyan has to carefully untangle their fingers. Fei Liu is deeply sedated, but Mei Chang Su frowns at the loss. The frown eases when Jingyan places a gentle kiss against his temple.

His skin is so cool. Jingyan lets his lips linger, then straightens up, draws a thick comforter up to Mei Chang Su’s shoulders. 

Xia Dong is watching him. For once she meets his eyes when he looks at her. Her expression is its usual implacable cold but her eyes look so exhausted, drained by grief. She nods at him, and he leaves. 

When Jingyan arrives at the Command Center, Marshall Lin is in a tense discussion with Lin Chen and several other pilots, Zhanying included.

“Fei Liu can’t ride.” Lin Chen hisses, banging his hand on his desk, mindless about the  tea that sloshes over the rim of his mug. “Not to mention the fact that _his partner is dead,_ his arm’s broken. So unless you have something else up your sleeve –“

“I can ride,” Jingyan says. His pulse is pounding in his throat. Nihuang stares at him sharply, and Lin Chen scoffs.

“We don’t have a choice.” Jingyan points out flatly. “We’re down one Mark-3, but there’s another waiting in the wings.” He looks at Zhanying. “And it still has its pilots.”

Mu Qing looks sceptical, but Marshall Lin’s eyes are narrowed and considering.

“No, we don’t have a choice.” He agrees. He turns to Zhanying. “Send word to the members of your team to get Foya ready as soon as you can.” Zhanying salutes, glances at Jingyan as he hurries out.

“No offense to Lieutenant Xiao,or Marshall Lin’s decision,” Gong Yu’s soft voice somehow manages to fill the room. Her cool gaze is on Jingyan, challenging. “But we know the nature of your experiments. We also know what Dr. Xia has done to Iron General. K-Science isn’t exactly the most trustworthy department of the PPDC.” Jingyan holds her accusing stare calmly.

“I understand.” Jingyan starts, stops. “I know I’ve committed many mistakes that caused the loss of so many lives.”

 _Don’t leave me. Please don’t leave me alone._  Jingyan closes his eyes, forces himself to speak.

“But I do know the enemy better than anyone else. And I’ve got a plan. One that can end this war, once and for all.” The pilots are murmuring among themselves. Marshall Lin’s expression doesn’t change, and Jingyan holds his gaze.

“Let’s hear it, then.” Marshall Lin says. The others fall silent. Jingyan takes a deep breath, begins.

\----

“Hey,”

The voice is soft with exhaustion and affection. Exactly the same as from the memories he’d sifted through but still so different, hearing it in person. The Emissary doesn’t look up from the blueprints spread out in front of him.

“Hey yourself.” He replies. It must be the correct response, because he feels arms wind around him. Warmth. It’s an effort not to stiffen and push him away, or bring him closer.

Two weeks, the Emissary thinks. Two weeks till his planned attack that would bring the Jaeger program to its knees. From his spot peeling tangerines on the floor, the little human boy – Lin Shu’s young helper - looks up questioningly. The Emissary shakes his head, wills himself to relax. He's irritated, more than anything else. He had wanted time, had wanted to coordinate the Jaegers' self-destruction with the portal's opening, but the quiet human woman Lin Shu works for has been watching him closely for some time now. 

He has to act, fast. Has to deflect suspicion until then, but the husband's presence will complicate matters even further, and the inconvenience of it all annoys him. 

“Can we talk?” Lin Shu’s husband asks. “It’s been a year.” The Emissary keeps his head down.

“What’s there talk about?” he asks lightly. “You left because you had to. I let you go because I needed you gone.” Cruelty. His human host had a lot of it, taken out mostly on the person he loved the most. To his credit Lin Shu’s husband doesn’t flinch. Just continues holding him, defiant and stubborn as the memories showed him.

“I know you’re still angry. That’s why I want to talk.”  The arms tighten around him.

“I just. I want to fix things between us when we still can.” Lin Shu’s husband says. Then, he places his hands on the host’s shoulders. The Emissary had long gotten used to the strangeness of human features but the naked longing he can identify in this one’s makes his breath come short.

“It doesn’t have to be today.” The human says. It should sound like begging but it’s not. Just calm, almost authoritative. “But we _will_ talk. We owe each other that much.” Instinctive prickles rise up the Emissary’s neck and shoulders, but the human just keeps holding him loosely. His expression exhausted but so soft. 

“You don’t give up, do you?” The Emissary says calmly. A slightly lopsided showing of teeth.

“I’m the water buffalo you married.” The human answers. The Emissary doesn’t have to feign his snort.

“So stubborn.” He says. But the more he thinks about it, the more he decides he can use this. Two weeks were still a sizeable interval to obtain as much useful information as possible.

The young boy pops up beside them, watching Jingyan unblinkingly. The Emissary places a hand on his head. This child, he thinks, is so easy to please and reassure. Lin Shu’s husband will be different.

“All right, Jingyan.” The name fits oddly on his mouth even as he keeps the words dredged up somewhere deep and exhausted inside him. “We’ll talk soon. Not here, not now. But. Just give us time.” Lin Shu’s husband- Jingyan – nods.

“I understand.” Jingyan says. His voice is infinitely gentle as he speaks. “I also know you’re tired. So am I. But Xiao Shu.” Here he places his palm against his husband’s cheek. Unaware that someone else was watching him through his eyes.

“I love you.” Jingyan says simply. “Always have, always will. I swore I would be with you in sickness and in health, and I broke that promise once. Don’t expect I’ll ever do it again, especially for you.” He breaks off. The Emissary waits for him to speak again, but he doesn’t. When he looks up, both Jingyan and Fei Liu are gone, and he’s alone.

\----

“I want to speak to my husband.” Jingyan says. “Alone.”

Dr. Jing’s expression remains calm, but Jingyan knows her well enough to see the concern there. And the shred of doubt. He wonders how much Xia Dong had told her.

 “I just want to speak to him for a moment.” Jingyan insists. “You can leave the cameras running.” Dr. Jing puts a hand on his shoulder.

“Jingyan, it’s not wise-“

“I’m getting back in a Jaeger.” Jingyan interrupts. Dr. Jing’s hand on his shoulder stills. 

“Don't take long, Jingyan. We will be recording your conversation.” She says. When one of the other scientists starts to protest, she levels him with a look. Jingyan doesn’t watch them go, all his focus on his husband. Wan and pale, and another person watches Jingyan out of his eyes. But Jingyan knows, though he can’t prove it, that Xiao Shu is still there.

“Piloting a Jaeger is suicide.” Mei Chang Su says without preamble. “They know your moves. They know Foya’s weaknesses.” Jingyan kneels in front of him, takes his cuffed hands.

He doesn’t bother asking how Mei Chang Su knows what he’s thinking. Xiao Shu knows his mind as well as his own. If Xiao Shu had figured out his next move, then so did Mei Chang Su.

“I don’t really have a choice anymore, do I?” Jingyan asks quietly. Mei Chang Su’s fingers are so thin, the skin covering them near-translucent. “If I don’t go out there, we’ll all die.”

“Jingyan…” Jingyan places a hand on Mei Chang Su’s face, and he falls still. So tense he’s like a cord near snapping. Jingyan takes a deep breath, presses his lips very gently against his.

“Xiao Shu. I know you’re still there.” He whispers. Mei Chang Su is so still he’s barely breathing. But when Jingyan presses forward again, he responds, opens his mouth.

The kiss is warm and desperate and full of teeth. Mei Chang Su kisses hard, and slightly sloppy with inexperience, but at Jingyan’s guidance he calms down. Kisses slower, deeper. Not like Xiao Shu at all, but Jingyan doesn’t stop. And he doesn’t stop himself from touching his husband’s face.

“Jingyan,” he hears someone whisper. He pulls away, just far enough that he and Mei Chang Su are breathing in each other’s space.

Jingyan can feel Mei Chang Su’s hands shaking as he grips the back of Jingyan’s neck, pupils blown wide. His breathing is erratic; Jingyan thinks for a moment, Mei Chang Su probably forgot how human lungs worked. Jingyan pulls Mei Chang Su close, and Mei Chang Su melts against him. Pliant. Vulnerable. Jingyan’s nose pressed to his nape, and he stares pointedly at the camera whirring behind Mei Chang Su.

_“Come home to me. Promise you’ll come home to me.”_

“I promise I’ll return.” Jingyan whispers, though Xiao Shu said nothing out loud. Mei Chang Su doesn’t react, but his hands spasm as Jingyan pulls away from his grip.

“Protect Fei Liu and my mother for me.” Jingyan says, stands up. The last Jingyan sees before the prison door closes is Xiao Shu’s face, his eyes shining under the dim light.

 

 ----

 

Lin Chen doesn’t say anything when Jingyan re-enters L’OCCENT. Zhanying is also there, the metal of his prosthesis gleaming as Lin Chen fusses over it. Jingyan hesitates to approach them. Guilt gnawing at him, just as it always did.

Before he can, the sirens go off. Lin Chen strides towards his workstation.

“Two Category 4s.” He says, eyes narrowed at the screen. His mouth is a hard slash of fatigue and determination. “Again.The Breach is stabilizing.”

“More Kaiju are coming.” Nihuang says. She’s already suited up. “It’s now or never.” She doesn’t have to specify what she means. Jingyan had been briefed about Dr. Jing and Marshall Lin’s plan to close the Breach for good, six months in the making.

“Jingyan. Are you sure about this?” Jingyan nods. Thinking of Fei Liu, of Tingsheng. Of the figure, sitting by himself in a dark room.

“I’m ready.”

\---

The Emissary had been silent ever since Jingyan left. He hadn’t even reacted when Jingyi returned, mute to Jingyi’s questions. A little ways away, Xiao Li, her assistant, shifts in unease.

The faraway look in his eyes unsettles her. She’s used to the Emissary’s silence, but this is different. As Jingyi watches he grips the edge of his sleeve with his fingers. Rubbing at the cloth before dropping it like he’d burned himself. 

“I spoke with Lin Shu the other day.” The Emissary’s soft voice fills the air. Xiao Li tenses, darting a quick glance at Jingyi.

Jingyi’s serene expression betrays no surprise. The Emissary continues to speak , every word slow and deliberate, like he’s struggling to understand.

“You and Lin Shu developed the Pons system together,” The Emissary says. “The Drift was something he discovered to save Jingyan’s life.” Jingyi remembers the pure horror of attempting to shut down the equipment as her son thrashed and seized after failing to move the Jaeger’s arm alone. Xiao Shu had leapt almost immediately to his side, jamming the spare headset on top of his skull before Jingyi could stop him and Jingyan’s convulsions had immediately ceased. Both his and Xiao Shu’s eyes going wide as they entered the Drift for the first time.

 “Ghost-drifting ,” Jingyi says quietly. The Emissary  lifts his gaze to hers, and her breath catches. For two years a stranger’s soul had been looking out at her from behind Xiao Shu’s eyes, arrogant and serene. Now, he looks like he’s in bewildered pain, the way Xiao Shu did the day Jingyan left for Anchorage.

“It’s a phenomenon that happens when two Jaeger pilots take on each other’s characteristics and memories.” Jingyi explains quietly. “Sometimes they can hear each other’s thoughts, know each other’s emotons even outside the Drift.”  Xiao Li looks worried and hesitant but she doesn’t dare interrupt, even as the Emissary’s eyes track Jingyi as she steps closer.

 “Of course, we never had time to publish a paper on it.”Jingyi says. “But I was able to extensively document the long-term side-effects among the Jaeger pilots and the new recruits.” The primary side-effect being the blurring together of identities, thoughts and memories melding together until neither pilot could determine which was whose.  

The edges of the Emissary’s lips quirk up.

“You knew this would happen.” He says. “That the Drift would destroy me. That’s why you let Jingyan be my interrogator.”  Jingyi thinks of Jingyan, visiting his husband in his prison, stroking his forehead as he lay sedated. Of the Emissary accepting flowers from Fei Liu, smiling at him with true warmth. Of being the silent witness to earlier. Jingyan holding his husband in his arms while the Emissary clung to him as tightly as he could.

Before she can answer, Jingyi’s cut off by the scream of the alarm. Xiao Li glances at her phone.

“Notification from L’OCCENT.”  Xiao Li says tersely. “Something’s happening in the Breach.  The pilots can’t check, they’re distracted by the Kaiju.” Jingyi feels a cold weight settle in her belly. But before she can answer -

“They’re after me.”  

The soft voice carries through the room. Mei Chang Su is standing, looking up at Jingyi.  One hand is clenched into a fist, hanging by his side.

“What did you say?” Jingyi asks.  

 “They’re after me.” Mei Chang Su says again. “  The Kaiju. The Breach is finally stable enough to accommodate it. Two will try to fight their way here. A third will follow when they fail.” He speaks quietly. Empty.  

 “Xiao Li. Please confirm with L’OCCENT.” Jingyi says. Xiao Li’s already headed out, calling Lin Chen.

“You need to get out of here.” Mei Chang Su’s eyes flicker to Jingyi. “In ten minutes it’ll be tearing through this bunker, looking for me.”

“Why are they after you?” Jingyi asks, quelling the anxiety that spikes through her.

The Emissary doesn’t answer, still staring at Jingyi. The same way Xiao Shu did when he begged her not to move to Hong Kong, please, don’t take Jingyan away. Then she hears the earsplitting screech of the sirens begin to sound. And there. That bone-chilling roar, still distant but already horribly close, too close.

“Mei Chang Su. Why are they after you? The Precursors have allowed us to detain you for a year. Why are they only after you now?” Jingyi forces herself to remain calm, to listen to the Emissary’s answer. 

 “Because.” The Emissary’s eyes are shining, overbright under the lights . Too human. As jingyi watches, blood starts to trickle from his nose. “Mei Chang Su has just betrayed them.”

\---

“One’s headed towards the Shatterdome!”

Mu Qing’s shout crackles over the damages speaker. Jinyan narrowly dodges a Kaiju’s bladed tail as it tries tear off his arm, grasps it by the throat and squeezes. It squeals, the sound muffled by the water. Zhanying grunts , straining and he gasps when jingyan succeeds in tearing the Kaiju’s lower jaw clean off.

An impotent roar. The water is murky with kaiju blue and smoke from the vents. From the lip of the Breach Jingyan can see Yunnan Pride punching the lights out of a hulking mass of gills and fangs, and then the tentacle Kaiju launches itself at Buddha’s Tooth again, Jingyan manages to impale it on his sword just before it can wind its limbs tight around the Conn-pod, ripping his sword through it and cutting it clean in half.

 “Stay put, the both of you!” Lin Chen snaps. “Xia Dong and Gong Yu have already suited up. There’s nothing more important than sealing the Rift, so get the bomb in there and blow it up!”

A roar. Buddha’s Tooth almost crumples, whatever powers the Precursors had made sure their latest and deadliest slave was equipped with included a sonic bomb. Jingyan feels something in his ear pop, blood running down his neck and then the Kaiju is abruptly silenced by Yunnan Pride crushing its jaws together and twisting. 

“Foya! You okay?” Lin Chen’s voice is warped through Jingyan’s injured ear, but then comes in clearly again. Jingyan blinks, but he and Zhanying are already up, limping towards Yunnan Pride as she grapples with Kaiju.

“We’re fine,” Zhanying says. And then they hear a roar from the speaker, then Lin Chen cursing, and the sound of metal screeching.

“L’OCCENT! Still there?” Jingyan bellows.  No answer. The tentacled Kaiju claws its way up again from the vent Jingyan had flung it into. Bleeding everywhere and snarling. Jingyan grits his teeth, reaching back and activating the bow as Zhanying takes aim.

Before he can fire, the mic screeches. But the person who picks it up isn’t Lin Chen.

“It’s their DNA.” Jingyan’s eyes widen at the sound of Xiao Shu’s voice. And it’s not a case of ghost-drifting, judging by the look of shock on Zhanying’s face.

“Xiao Shu?” Jingyan shouts. A burst of garbled static, then Xiao Shu’s voice fills the Conn-Pod again.

“Take the Kaiju carcass with you when you jump,” Xiao Shu says. His words are slurred, dredged up like  the very act of speaking is painful.  “Kaiju DNA is the key that will let you through the Breach, otherwise the bomb will bounce back just as always. You have to take the carcass down with you when you set off the bomb, it’s the only way to seal it!”

 _Hurry._ Xiao Shu’s voice, but not. _I don’t have much time._

“Hurry!” Xiao Shu shouts. More sound of ripping metal, then Lin Chen cursing as he takes the mic.

“The two of you got that?” Lin Chen snaps.

“I hear you.”  Nihuang grunts. “How do we know he’s telling the truth?”  The Kaiju had torn free from Yunnan Pride’s grip, and along with the tentacle one was  circling her and Buddha’s Tooth. Through the radio, they hear screams. The ratatat of fighter jets, and a roar.

The speaker crackles, then Dr. Jing answers.  

“I’m vouching for him.” Dr. Jing says. Even now her voice remains calm. “Jingyan, at this point we don’t have anything else to lose, and we can’t afford to have the bomb be deflected.”  

“Mom-“ But Xiao Shu interrupts. 

 “Jingyan,” Xiao Shu says harshly. Jingyan would know him, the real him anywhere. His voice is as clear as the voice in his head. “ _Finish this.”_

 And Jingyan. Jingyan doesn’t hesitate.

“I will.” His voice is hoarse. The radio goes silent. The two Jaegers brace themselves against the trench floor as the two kaiju scream and launch their last attack.

\---

He is very, very cold.

Thoughts and memories drift past like passing shoals of fish he’d once seen while deep sea diving. Shining in the murk and Mei Chang Su raises his hand up, tries to reach for them like he did in the memory. But it’s not his memory, not really. Just another thing he had stolen, they had stolen.

Stop. He doesn’t know where it comes from. It takes a near insurmountable amount of effort to be here, and now. To not get caught in the silver shoal. Broken glass glitters on the floor with its own light. He’s alone. At least, he thinks he is. One moment Lin Shu was holding the mic in his hands, revealing Mei Chang Su’s secret that he tried so hard to protect. The next, a black wave had washed over him, over them both, taking him down the undertow.

Lin Shu is silent. Mei Chang Su wonders where he is.

Noise. A commotion. Human ears are frail, limited. More so than usual. Everything’s fading around the edges. Mei Chang Su tries to move his hands, but his limbs aren’t responding.

“Xiao Shu!” That name. He’d almost forgotten it. Hadn’t it been his, once? But that had been a very long time ago.

Warmth. A familiar voice, barking out orders. Hands, very carefully lifting his head up. His eyes are blurred but Mei Chang Su would recognize that face, that human face anywhere.

He needs to tell him something.  Something very important. But when he opens his mouth, he feels himself cough, wet and weak. The taste of iron fills his mouth, dribbles down the corners of his lips.

“Don’t talk.” Jingyan says, his hands shaking as he brushes Mei Chang Su’s hair back, wipes the blood running down his nose, from the corners of his mouth. His ears. And oh, there’s Lin Shu, in the warmth and safety that washes over him when Jingyan gathers his broken pieces into his arms.

Mei Chang Su winces as he’s lifted up then he’s floating again. Being loaded onto something. A gurney? Then, the sound of crying. Fei Liu. Mei Chang Su wants to lift his hands, tell the boy it’s all right, it’s all right, no one will ever hurt you again.  But he can’t move.

Jingyan takes his hand, places it in Fei Liu’s. The boy bends over it, his shoulders heaving. How did he get here, Mei Chang Su wonders. He’s been hurt, he should be recovering, resting. But it takes too much of his strength to speak.

“Stay with me, Xiao Shu.” Jingayn’s voice is breaking, and oh. Jingyan is so tired, so worn down. But the job isn’t done.

“They’ll be back.” Every syllable is forced through Mei Chang Su’s mind, past Lin Shu’s lips. The image of Jingyan flickers behind Mei Chang Su’s half-closed eyelids. Blood wells up his throat again, but Mei Chang Su forces himself to speak.

“They’ll be back.” He says again. “They’ll re-open the Rift, and they’ll keep coming back. You have to take care. Protect Fei Liu.”

_I can’t, anymore._

If Jingyan says anything, he can no longer hear it. From very far away, Mei Chang Su can feel his original body fading. Dying. The facility, he supposes, had been completely obliterated, the laboratory housing him along with it. But before he went, there was still one thing he had to say.

“I’m sorry.” He moves his lips, but the words that come out are formed wrong, but he doesn’t have the strength to say it again. Fei Liu is sobbing, and the sound it is what has Mei Chang Su finally shattering to pieces.

“Don’t go.” Jingyan is crying. And he doesn’t want to. But as always all Lin Shu’s choices slip from his grasp as the dark bleeds all around him.

\--

“I want a honeymoon in Vegas.” Xiao Shu declares. They’re stretched out in bed together. Jingyan lazily stroking his husband’s spine while he plays with the ring around his finger.

“Marshall Lin won’t be pleased that you’ll fritter away your pension on the slot machine.” Jingyan says, grinning when Xiao Shu reaches for his pillow, aims it as Jingyan’s head.

“Look, after this war I am going to get so hammered I’ll be dancing on tables, ass-naked. Dad can disown me for all I care.” Jingyan pins Xiao Shu down on the bed, smirking.

“You’ll disgrace my family name that way?” Xiao Shu grins wickedly.

“All that, and more. I’ll splurge your family fortune and indulge myself with all the good things in life. You’re gonna love it.” Jingyan rolls his eyes, but then Xiao Shu’s eyes soften.

Jingyan leans over to brush a kiss against his lips. Xiao Shu kisses back, and there’s nothing chaste about it. Squirming beneath Jingyan until the both of them are red-faced, breathing hard.

“We’ll be together for the rest of our lives.” Xiao Shu says when they pull apart to catch their breath. His eyes are bright and defiant. “It’s going to be a great one.”

\--

“An eye.” The recorder is whirring, the red light blinking, indicating the camera battery’s running low. It had been the second one for today. Jingyan glances at his mother, but Dr. Jing shakes her head, and Jingyan leans back against his seat. This was the last one for today, then.

It’s late morning. Marshall Lin had initially wanted Xiao Shu to remain in the Shatterdome, but Jingyan had mutinied and insisted they have this interview elsewhere. So now they were on the rooftop garden overlooking the ocean. Fei Liu’s poking at some white orchids at the other side, glancing surreptitiously up every few moments.

His arm is still in the cast – he won’t be climbing trees for a long time – but he’s perfectly capable of breaking anybody’s hand if they ever hurt Xiao Shu again. If Jingyan had his say in it, no one ever would again. As do his mother, and Marshall Lin.

“An eye?” Marshall Lin sounds sceptical. Xiao Shu just shrugs. The circles beneath his eyes look like bruises. He’s still so thin, but his eyes when he glances at Jingyan are his own.

“That’s the closest approximation I can reach, okay?” There’s a half-finished mug of tea in his hands, and he carefully brings it up to his lips to take a sip. “There was a glowing orange eye hanging above this massive Lovecraftian laboratory complex or something, loads of blue lightning everywhere. Don’t know why they haven’t learned to insulate their wiring considering they’ve mastered tearing through the space-time continuum.” Xiao Shu drains his tea, wincing at the flavour.  

 “And this eye was the device powering the portal?” Xiao Shu shrugs again.

“As far as I could gather. The Breach was located on top of the science facility-slash-temple where they were constructing the Kaiju. I know It sounds like something out of a sci-fi B-movie, but you try being stuck in an alien’s head for two fucking years, see if anything you can find there makes sense on our terms.” Xiao Shu sets the mug down on the table beside him, and Jingyan leans over, folds their fingers together. Xiao Shu leans against his shoulder. He closes his eyes, but his speech doesn’t slur together and he doesn’t look like he’s about to have a seizure. Still, Jingyan keeps watch, tracing the back of his hand with his thumb.

 “The Jaeger program was the Precursors’ main target.” Xiao Shu says. “They couldn’t let the Kaiju in all at once- the Breach only allows for intervals. Mei Chang Su made sure the Jaeger program would be decimated so the Kaiju would have an easier time doing clean-up. I think he would have timed it along with the Breach fully opening, but Auntie Jing was getting suspicious. He had to rush things.”

His eyes open. He stares right at Jingyan. Jingyan squeezes his hand.

“Lucky he fucked that up.” He says softly.

A pause. Jingyan thinks Xiao Shu’s about to say something but he falls silent.

The recorder starts beeping, indicating its memory has been used up. Marshall Lin takes it, but at the shake of Dr. Jing’s head, he orders his assistant to take it instead of inserting a new memory card. His eyes are serious as he stares at Xiao Shu, and Xiao Shu stares back at his father, exhaustion carved into every premature line on his face, almost challenging, but with so much love in his eyes, so much relief.

 “Yunnan Pride wiped out the whole facility.” Xiao Shu says. “It’ll take them a while to rebuild. Hopefully, they never can but I wouldn’t be complacent if I were you.”

 “Oh, we’re not being complacent.” Dr. Jing says mildly. “We’re already conducting ways to engineer a reverse-Rift, make sure they never manage to open anything on the ocean floor ever again. “ She hesitates a little. “Xiao Shu –“

But Xiao Shu shakes his head. “Don’t.”  He says. His voice cracks. “It’s not safe. I can’t know too much, or anything about what the PPDC’s up to. I know you agree with me.” Dr. Jing is quiet. Marshall Lin leans over, gives Xiao Shu’s shoulder a squeeze. 

“Xia Jiang’s in fucking prison?” Xiao Shu asks. Marshall Lin nods.

“Yes.” Marshall Lin pauses. “His motives were… understandable, but his means cost too many lives. He won’t be able to get out for a very long time.” Xiao Shu bares his teeth into a snarl.

“He'd better die in there.” He says. “Otherwise I’m killing him myself.” His eyes glitter with fury. Jingyan, who agrees, strokes the back of his neck to calm him.

 “When is Xiao Shu set to be cleared?” He asks, changing the subject.

“The panel who examined Xiao Shu was impartial and found no reason to further detain him.” Dr. Jing’s voice is soft. “So long as he’s placed under observation, there is no reason he can’t live the rest of his life in peace.”

Xiao Shu closes his eyes, leans his head against Jingyan. “They’d fucking better,” He mumbles.

“I’ll hold the PPDC to their decision.” Marshall Lin replies. He glances sideways at Xiao Shu, who looks halfway to falling asleep. His face softens.

“We’ll have dinner later, all right? At your favourite place .” He squeezes his son’s shoulder again. Xiao Shu grins, and Jingyan’s breath catches in his throat.

“You mean takeout from my favourite place.” Xiao Shu says wryly. And it’s not even funny but Marshall Lin laughs. Booming and loud. Jingyan’s startled. It’s been so long since he’d heard his father in law laugh, or seen Xiao Shu smile as his father enfolds him into a one-armed hug.

“I love you, Xiao Shu.” Marshall Lin says, and his voice is quiet and thick with tears. “We all do, so much.” 

“I love you too, Dad.” Xiao Shu says quietly. He closes his eyes, lets his father hold him.

Around them, the wind sighs through the garden. It still reeks of smoke from the wreckage of the last battle, but the sun’s peeking through the clouds. And they can smell jasmine, their scent hanging sweet and soft on the breeze. Marshall Lin lets go, and Jingyan immediately takes  Xiao Shu’s hand when he reaches up for him. Tangling their fingers together and squeezing as Xiao Shu blinks rapidly.

“We’ll give you two time alone.” Dr. Jing says. “Xiao Shu’s set to be released tomorrow, Jingyan, all you need to do is sign the papers.” Jingyan nods.

“I’ll handle it. Let’s give them a moment for now, but I’ll need your help later, Jingyan.” Marshall Lin says. Dr. Jing nods. A final clap on the shoulder, and they depart.  Fei Liu bounds up after Dr. Jing. Nodding at what she’s saying before immediately making a beeline for Xiao Shu. Dropping to his knees and leaning his head against Xiao Shu’s knee.

“You know you don’t have to retire from piloting, too.” Xiao Shu says, smiling weakly as he pushes his fingers into Fei Liu’s hair.

“I want to.” Jingyan says quietly. Holding Xiao Shu close, his chest feeling lighter and lighter as Xiao Shu leans against him. “I just want to be with you for the rest of our lives.” Jingyan remembers their wedding night, the both of them tangled together in their bunker. Xiao Shu snorts and swats weakly at him.

“I guess it’s for the best.” Xiao Shu says. His mouth tightens. “They’re not going to trust you as long as you’re associated with me. And I’m not running the risk of destroying the world like I almost did, so.”

“Xiao Shu…” Jingyan says. Helpless. Xiao Shu looks so hollow. Lost.

 _Do you honestly think he’ll be happy to regain control?_ He banishes the memory away, but the bitterness of it lingers and the guilt. Xiao Shu will carry this weight all his life, guilt that shouldn’t have been his, something that was never even his _fault._

Fei Liu makes a small noise, presses his head against Xiao Shu’s knee. Xiao Shu closes his eyes, opens them again.

“What did he say to you, when we were dying?” He asks. Jingyan blinks.

“What?”  

“You know what I mean. Don’t evade.” Xiao Shu turns Jingyan’s face towards his. “He meant to say ‘I’m sorry’, but something else slipped out. What was it?”

Jingyan is silent for a long moment.  Xiao Shu reaches up, traces Jingyan’s jaw.

“Jingyan?” Xiao Shu’s voice is gentle. Jingyan remembers a kiss. Remembers dark eyes, blank with bewilderment and pain. 

  “I love you,” Jingyan finally says. It’s a struggle, but he forces himself to look up. Xiao Shu deserves that much.  “That’s what Mei Chang Su said. He told me ‘I love you.’” He swallows.

 “I thought it was you.” He says weakly. Xiao Shu’s shoulders lift into half a shrug. His eyes are very far away, and Jingyan cautiously presses their foreheads together.

“Maybe it was mostly me. But I know he meant it.” Xiao Shu says. Dredging the words up, like he’s unwilling to admit it but had to carve them out of himself. He looks up at Jingyan, smiling slightly when Jingyan cups his face in his hands.

“Mei Chang Su loved you.” He says simply. “He didn’t understand it, any of it, but he did. And he saved you. I can’t forget that.” He lets out a shaky sigh. “Everything he did to destroy me and the world, but he couldn’t hurt you or Fei Liu. What a cliché, huh?”

Jingyan doesn’t respond, just wraps Xiao Shu in his arms. Xiao Shu breathes against the curve of his neck, and the sun is shining straight into Jingyan’s eyes but he doesn’t care.

Fei Liu makes a small noise, and Xiao Shu pulls away. He’s smiling. Broken but still radiant.

“You gotta go settle that paperwork now. I absolutely refuse to stay here a second longer than I have to.” Jingyan hesitates, but Xiao Shu waves him off. Fei Liu’s watching them both with bright eyes.

“Fei Liu will look after me. Now _go._ ” And Jingyan smiles back. Kisses Xiao Shu, short and sweet on the mouth before getting up, turning to leave.

Lin Shu watches him go, his smile fading as the shadows return to his face, but the edges of it linger. Fei Liu watches him, worried.

“Su-gege’s sad,” He says. Mei Chang Su brushes away the crumbs crusted on the edge of Fei Liu’s mouth with the backs of his fingers. 

“I’m all right, xiao-Fei.” He says softly “We’ll be all right.” The boy nods, comforted, rests his head against his knee again.

**Author's Note:**

> :D THANK YOU FOR EVERYONE WHO HELPED WITH THIS FIC {special mention to ExtraPenguin who helped me through the science-y stuff and Luna whose regular shrieking sobs fed my soul} :D
> 
> I will not be ashamed to ask you guys to PLEASE COMMENT because I... wrote this... during finals season...


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